Gary O’Sullivan vs. Antoine Douglas – Results

Boxingnews24.com

By Tim Royner: The big punching middleweight Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan (27-2, 19 KOs) used his sledgehammer power shots to tire out and stop #8 WBC, #10 WBA Antoine Douglas (22-2-1, 16 KOs) in a 7th round knockout on Saturday night on HBO World Championship Boxing at the Place Bell in Laval, Quebec, Canada.

O’Sullivan, 33, backed Douglas against the ropes in the 7th and nailed him with a 5-punch combination to flatten him. The badly hurt Douglas made it back to his feet, but the referee wisely chose to stop the contest at 1:03 of the 7th.

O’Sullivan struggled in rounds 1 through 3. He started coming on the in 4th in landing some big left hooks to the head of Douglas. From that point on, O’Sullivan got stronger with each round and wore Douglas down with his left hooks and right hands until stopping him in the 7th.

O’Sullivan, 33, wasn’t supposed to win tonight. Douglas, 25, was the ranked contender with the WBA and WBC at 160, whereas O’Sullivan was a 2nd tier fighter with previous losses to Chris Eubank Jr. and Billy Joe Saunders. Douglas had been beaten by Avtandil Khurtsidze last year in March, but he’d come back from those defeats to win his last 3 fights by stoppage and look good in doing so.

O’Sullivan and Douglas took turns landing big punches through the first 3 rounds, with the Irish fighter getting the worst of it. Both guys were unloading on each other with massive shots. The tide of the fight seemed to change in the 4th round, with O’Sullivan landing several hard left hooks to the head of Douglas that got his attention. From that point on, O’Sullivan began to take over the fight. Douglas was still landing, but he didn’t look as strong and as willing to let himself get hit as he had in the first 3 rounds.

O’Sullivan showed that he could take the shots from Douglas in order to land his own big punches. It came down to O’Sullivan being able to stay in the pocket and take Douglas’ punches in order to fire back his own harder shots. Douglas could not handle O’Sullivan’s power shots. O’Sullivan was vulnerable though when he was coming forward looking to get in punching range.

O’Sullivan usually had to take 2 or 3 punches just to get in close proximity to Douglas. However, once O’Sullivan was in close, he would blast away at Douglas with big left hooks to the head and body. The straight rights from O’Sullivan also proved to be quite devastating. Douglas had no defense for his right. The 5th round was critical for O’Sullivan. The right hands that he landed on the jaw of Douglas seemed to take the fight out of him. From that point on, it was only a matter of time before O’Sullivan got to Douglas’ chin to stop him.

After the bout was over, O’Sullivan spoke of wanting to face WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders in a rematch to avenge his previous loss to him. Saunders wants to face the winner of the Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin fight. He might not be interested in facing O’Sullivan. That could be a hard fight for Saunders if he’s not in great shape.

The final punch states had O’Sullivan connecting on 130 of 447 shots for a 29 connect percentage. For his part, Douglas landed 108 of 376 shots for a connect percentage of 29.