Adam Azim is convinced he laid down a marker with his performance against former IBF world titlist Sergey Lipinets at Wembley Arena on Saturday.

Azim floored Lipinets with a quickfire counterpunch in their third round and ultimately overwhelmed the Kazakh in the ninth.

The fast-rising star from Slough said that proved “100 percent I’m a threat”.

“It’s a former world champion,” Azim told Sky Sports. “Only [Jaron] ‘Boots’ Ennis has stopped him and I’m the second person to stop him and the way I did it, I dismantled him, broke him down and I thought I done really well.

“Hopefully there’s more fights on the horizon like this.”

He issued a message directly to British rival Dalton Smith. “Tell him to have an actual fight, don’t take easy fights,” Azim said. “I wish him the best of luck. I want him to win. I won.

“The fight’s grown and I’ve got a lot of respect for him. When I do fight him, I’ll teach him a lesson.

“He doesn’t know what I have, what I’ll bring to him. All the people around him keep talking, keep talking, keep talking – you guys haven’t seen the best of me yet, that was just a little bit of me, just a little bit.”

Smith isn’t the only all-British fight Azim would like to have. He’d welcome a bout with Josh Taylor, previously the undisputed 140lb world champion.

“I don’t know if he’ll take it,” Azim said of Taylor. “A great fight, it’ll be a massive fight. But let’s see what he wants. Honestly let’s see what he wants. If Josh wants it, let’s have it.

“It’s patience,” he continued. “Getting up to the top you have to be patient.

“[I’m] a threat to all of the division and I’m not far away from it.”

Shane McGuigan, Azim’s trainer, previously coached Taylor himself. He wouldn’t shy away from that fight.

“We’d like a big name. We’d like names,” McGuigan told Sky Sports. “Domestically you’ve got Dalton Smith, you’ve got Josh Taylor, you’ve got Jack Catterall.

“These are the guys that we would be looking at domestically. But we don’t want to go lower than that in terms of a domestic fight. I don’t think there’s any credibility going lower.

“We want those sort of names or a big American name.”

McGuigan added: “He’s ready to box the best guys. I genuinely believe he is.”

Apart from low blows, that saw Azim docked two points in the fourth and seventh rounds, the 22-year-old delivered near enough a complete performance against Lipinets.

McGuigan also pointed out how Azim adjusted to deal with the punches straying low.

“They were very close to each other, [Lipinets] was getting very short and obviously he is small anyway and he [Azim] was starting to bend over to really go round the outside of the elbow, then Lipinets was changing the angle and shooting in close,” McGuigan explained.

“It’s accidental but you’ve got to address it. You’ve got to be able to change it up and once he had two low blows, once he did that, he switched it up and went for the head.

“It’s very hard to adapt like that in a fight but it just shows you how comfortable he is.”

McGuigan was well pleased with Azim’s work. “He’s just dismantled a guy that’s been a world champion, only been beaten by guys that are really elite fighters,” the trainer said.

“I think he did a fantastic job. He stopped him, dissected him with his feet early on, broke him up with the jab. Dropped him in the third round and decided to stand with him.

“Lipinets, he was banking on getting close to Adam, getting close and being able to stand there and take him out. But once he got there, Adam was just so much better on the inside than him.”

Azim will likely next box in the summer and wants to have a third bout later in the year. A fight with Dalton Smith, providing they both keep winning, could be looming on the horizon.

Ben Shalom, Azim’s promoter, said the Dalton Smith fight is “inevitable at some point”.

He told Sky Sports: “In the same way we’re chasing the Ryan Garcias and the Devin Haneys, they’re chasing Adam Azim and that’s genuinely how it feels. I think the fight will happen.

“But I think the trajectory Adam’s on this quickly, this early on in his career means that this will happen when we decide it’s going to happen. I think it’s a fight that happens down the line, maybe for a title.

“It’s two big British names and we’ve seen what they can do with Khan and Brook, and Eubank and Benn. You don’t often get those nights in boxing and there are not many domestic opponents that can really rival Adam Azim’s stature.

“Dalton Smith’s a great fighter. It’s a big fight down the line, it’s a massive fight down the line. But ultimately Dalton Smith needs Adam Azim much more than Adam needs Dalton,” Shalom continued.

“Of course they want to get Adam as early as possible, they’ve been hoping for that fight since he was 19 years old.

“I’m sure it will happen in the next 12 months.”