Photo credit: Stephanie Trapp

Middleweight Antoine Douglas will now fight middleweight contender Avtandil Khurtsidze on March 5, as announced late Tuesday afternoon.

The bout, which will take place at the Sands Bethlehem Event Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, will open the special edition broadcast of “Showtime Championship Boxing.”

Douglas was scheduled to fight former middleweight titleholder Sam Soliman but the Australian was forced to withdraw from the fight last week due to a nagging knee injury.

Khurtsidze was scheduled to fight Giovanni Lorenzo on Feb. 17 in New York City but the fight was cancelled when Khurtsidze was reportedly above the contracted fight weight.

Khurtsidze (31-2-2, 20 knockouts), who is ranked No. 9 by the WBC, has won his last eight consecutive bouts since his 12-round unanimous decision loss to Hassan N’Dam in Oct. of 2010.

The 23-year-old Douglas (19-0-1, 13 KOs) from Burke, Virginia had an impressive 2015, winning all three bouts by knockout over modest opposition.

In his last bout on Nov. 6, Douglas dropped Les Sherrington a total of five times in route to a fourth round stoppage win.

In the main event of the Showtime telecast, unbeaten junior middleweight Julian Williams will fight Marcello Matano in a 12-round elimination bout.

Francisco A. Salazar has written for RingTV since Oct. of 2013 and has covered boxing in Southern California and abroad since 2000. Francisco also covers boxing for the Ventura County (CA) Star newspaper, Boxingscene.com, and Knockout Nation. He can be reached by email at [email protected] or on Twitter at FSalazarBoxing.

SUBSCRIBE

You can subscribe to the print and digital editions of THE RING Magazine by clicking the banner or here. On the cover this month: Tyson Fury heads up the 87th Annual RING Awards as Fighter of the Year. You can also order the current issue, which is on newsstands, or back issues on our subscribe page.