By Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten #9 WBA, #11 WBO, #14 IBF middleweight contender Antoine Douglas (19-0-1, 13 KOs) had an easy time on Friday night in stopping an over-matched #12 WBA Les Sherrington (35-8, 30 KOs) in the 4th round at the D Hotel and Casino in downtown Las Vegas.
Douglas, 23, knocked the 33-year-old Sherrington down five times in the fight. The bout was stopped in the 5th after Douglas dropped Sherrington with a left to the body. In the 3rd, Douglas knocked Sherrington down twice with left hooks to the head.
Sherrington was dropped twice in the 2nd from left hands. In the 1st, Sherrington was knocked down by a right hand from Douglas. The fight was stopped officially at 1:02 by referee Kenny Bayless.
Sherrington made Douglas look really good in this fight, but it’s still hard to know how good he is because Sherrington was so bad. Sherrington is the same fighter that the light hitting Sam Soliman knocked out in 9 rounds in 2013, and the same fighter that journeyman Kashif Mumtaz (7-24-1) knocked out in the 1st round in 2011.
As bad as Sherrington is, it’s hard to understand why the World Boxing Association has him ranked at #12 with their organization because he doesn’t look like a fighter who deserves to be ranked at all in the top 15, and that’s not just because of how badly he performance last night against Douglas. He just doesn’t look like a 1st tier fighter in my view.
Douglas showed good hand speed in beating Sherrington. His left hook and right hands were particularly effective in the fight. However, Douglas looks like the same fighter that struggled to a 10 round draw against Michel Soro in July 2014. Douglas is still very easy to hit, and he doesn’t look that powerful despite getting a stoppage win last night. I don’t know that Douglas would be able to stop a good fighter with a chin and talent.
“They said this was my graduation day, time for a cap and gown, so this was definitely a big win,” Douglas said via Fight News. “Now, it’s time for me to take the next step.”
While Douglas has excellent boxing skills, I don’t know that he’s good enough to compete against the better middleweights in the division. If you put him in with some of the contenders like Chris Eubank Jr., Billy Joe Saunders, Tureano Johnson, Peter Quillin and Arif Magomedov, I think he’d lose to all of those fighters. He’s good enough to fight to a draw against the likes of Soro, but he would be out of his depths against rugged fighters with power.
Douglas wants to step it up now that he’s beaten Sherrington. He might as well do that because he’s not going to go anywhere fighting the kind of competition he’s been fighting since he turned pro, but I don’t see him being able to get past the above mentioned fighters. Douglas will be a good gatekeeper type of fighter at 160, but I think he’s better off moving down to 154, and trying to make it down there. His lack of punching power won’t be as much of a liability at that weight compared to at 160.
In other boxing results on the card:
Taras “Real Deal” Shelestyuk UD 10 Aslanbek Kozaev
Keenan Smith UD 8 Benjamin Whitaker
Sam Teah UD 8 O’Shaquie Foster
Hector Frometa UD 4 Oscar Mora
Jeremy Nichols TKO 3 Isaac Freeman
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