O’SULLIVAN SETS UP A TITLE SHOT
EXPLOSIVE and uncompromising, Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan produced a peformance to remember in Montreal on Saturday night to see off Antoine Douglas and put himself right in the frame for a world middleweight title shot.
It was a stunning win, especially considering Corkman O’Sullivan had been waylaid by a chest infection two weeks prior to the bout. However, he showed little ill-effects from that as he claimed the WBO intercontinental title with a seventh-round stoppage in what was the most significant win of his career.
O’Sullivan was fighting on the undercard of WBO champion Billy Joe Saunders’ successful defence against David Lemieux and he is now in the picture to get a shot at Saunders, who inflicted one of the two defeats in the Corkman’s 27-fight career.
Douglas had the better of the early rounds but O’Sullivan took control by the fifth round, catching his younger opponent with a flurry of clean shots. After catching the American with a clean right in the seventh, O’Sullivan seized the initiative and piled on the pressure before the referee stopped the contest.
Saunders, who had too much class for local favourite Lemieux, may be wary of putting his title on the line against such a powerful puncher. The other option for O’Sullivan would be to meet the winner of the Gennady Golovkin-Canelo Alvarez rematch. Whatever 2018 holds he deserves enormous credit for re-building his career.
‘I was sick for two weeks with a chest infection, so I was not at 100 per cent,’ O’Sullivan said afterwards. ‘But I thought it was a good opportunity so I decided to fight anyway. I am happy with my performance but I could have done better.’
Meanwhile, Niall Kennedy retained his New England heavyweight title in Boston earlier on Saturday when he stopped Danny Calhoun with a perfect body shot in the second round.