Unbeaten middleweight Antoine Douglas finds motivation in horrific childhood

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - The boxing world is littered with poignant and inspirational tales of fighters who overcame life's odds by pulling themselves up from the depths of poverty, despair, drugs, or inner city street life and made it to the top.

Floyd Mayweather Jr., Manny Pacquiao, Sergio Martinez, and the once-homeless Peterson brothers, Lamont and Anthony, are but a few of the champions who beat overwhelming odds.

But few can match the incredible story of Antoine Douglas.

Born in the early '90s in Washington D.C., prematurely to a crack addict at a time when crack cocaine was an epidemic in this country - the mayor of the Nation's Capital was imprisoned for possessing the drug - Douglas was not expected to survive childbirth. And if he did, doctors told his mother he would never be a fully functioning human being.

Douglas not only survived, he thrived, despite being passed around with his siblings through the foster care system, relative to relative, one abusive and neglectful situation after another, not knowing where his next meal would come from, or if he had a bed to sleep on.

None of that could deter the scrawny D.C. child from growing up to be a middleweight contender and soon, possibly, world champion. This is one fully functioning human being.

"As a kid I was very skinny," Douglas told Paste BN Sports during a recent one-on-one interview at his Alexandria gym. "You could probably see my ribs, (I was) skinny with a big head. I was like a Tootsie Roll pop. A stick with the big ball on top. I was the fragile kid, the youngest of all my siblings, and I was the one who played the video games, sat in the house all the time."

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That Douglas, now 23, turned the nerdy Tootsie Roll Pop persona into a powerfully built fighting machine is a testament to the power of the human spirit. Hearing his story makes you wonder how this kid could ever lose.

Hard to believe? Watch Douglas fight on Saturday night on Showtime (10 p.m. ET) and see for yourself.

The fighter nicknamed "Action" (19-0-1, 13 KOs) was supposed to take on former middleweight champion Sam Solimon at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Bethlehem, Pa. But the 40-something Australian was injured late in training camp, and 36-year-old Avtandil Khurtsidze (31-2-2, 20 KOs), from the Republic of Georgia, stepped up to take the fight. The Showtime card is headlined by undefeated Julian "J-Rock" Williams against Italy's Marcello Matano for the WBC's top spot in the 154-pound division.

Antoine Douglas has a special ability to see the positive in everything, even deplorable living conditions and being abandoned by his drug-addicted mom.

"Looking back, it's my biggest motivation, my biggest influence," he said of his nomadic, troubled early years. "Knowing where I came from, that alone sets the goal and the tempo for where I want to be. That's why it's the main influence. When I was going through that, I was young, I was always a go-with-the-flow type of kid. It was never hard for me to focus on this.

"I tended to always be optimistic. I never focused on how much it hurt, or put a crick in my neck to sleep on a couch, or to sleep on the floor. I just always found happiness in whatever was going on. I never looked at the negative. People see it as a negative, but I would never have had it any other way because I appreciate what it's done for me. It made me who I am today."

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Douglas' introduction to boxing came from his mother's cousin, Petrick Washington, who took in the siblings somewhere along the way.

One day Petrick loaded Antoine, then nine, and his older brother Devon into the car and as they were driving, said, 'Y'all want to box?'

"The first thing that popped into my head was Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson. I had no idea boxing was a sport for children, or an amateur sport," Antoine said. "So I'm thinking, man, I'm going to have to go in there and fight those guys. They're going to kick my butt."

It was far from love at first punch. There were days when young Antoine didn't want to go back the next day because there were kids more talented, faster, had more experience, and "I got tired of getting my head beat in," he said. "But I started to see how it paid off and I was like, 'man, this feels good.' And it also provided a second home for me. I could go to a place where these people were my friends and have fun. I enjoyed that, too.

"Then it all came together and I gained a love for it. It got to a point where it became a platform to grant me a better life for my family and a better future. So I couldn't ask for any better."

Douglas was not just a good kid, he was smart, too. He was an honor roll student at Anacostia High in the District, thanks to Petrick, who instilled much-needed discipline in the unruly Douglas kids.

"When I was five and my brothers and sisters were older, we would be out running the streets until midnight, riding our bikes around like we were adults, sabotaging construction sites, stealing from the local corner store, who, sometimes they would let us steal because they knew we didn't have much to eat. At the time we really didn't know right from wrong, so Petrick put that structure in us."

Antoine didn't like school at first, and wouldn't do the work. But when he was pushed to prove how he was doing in school, "I started to be good and do my work because I didn't want to get in trouble at home. My first report card I was on honor roll and I got rewarded for it and I got a taste of that reward," he said. "From there it was pretty much be quiet and do my work . . . and I liked the fact that it opened so many more doors for me. I saw the relationships I gained from being good as opposed to being bad. I thought, 'being good ain't so bad'."

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When he was a senior in high school, Antoine moved in with his trainer, Kay Koroma, who also happens to be his uncle. Nearly six years later, Douglas still lives in Burke, Va., with Koroma and his star amateur pupil Shakur Stevenson, one of USA Boxing's favorites to win a gold medal in Rio.

"Watching my nephew grow up, in life he faced a lot of adversity," Koroma told Paste BN Sports. "My sister being on drugs, and the D.C. environment back then, it was easy being sidetracked by a lot of things.

"Antoine's the only one of all his siblings that never got into that stuff, like hanging on the streets, going to clubs. He was more content to stay home and play video games. He hangs with the oddest kids, kids who should be part of the Geek Squad or something."

Koroma said people have no idea how hard Douglas had to work to stay on the honor roll in high school.

"He had to get up 4 or 5 in the morning to work out, then go to school, people don't know how severe and serious it was," Koroma said.

Despite being a boxing coach, life doesn't always revolve around the sport when kids come to live with Koroma. They take trips to the mall, roller skating or the zoo, and dine at nice restaurants, among other things.

"I take them out, show them how to present themselves, how to act," he said. "A lot of them grew up in the ghetto, and I show them that, hey, you can have fun and not be on the block.

"I feel like all of them came into my life for a reason, and I'm happy where they are headed right now."

Douglas is headed for a title fight in one of the most competitive and stacked divisions in the sport. He expects to be fighting for a championship belt "If not later this year, within a year," he said. "I'm in the rankings already and fights now will put me in mandatory spots."

He's the No. 3-ranked middleweight by the WBO, No. 6 by the WBA and No. 11 by the IBF.

"There's an image, a stigma of D.C. fighters that they can't make it," Koroma said. "But the way I look at it is we're not part of that statistic. I believe my nephew will be a world champion this year or next year."

One of the most heartwarming aspects of this story is both his mother and father are part of Antoine's life these days. His mom, Annette Douglas, is Antoine's biggest fan, making herself heard at all his matches.

"I could stop boxing right now, never having won a major title, and she would still be my biggest fan," Antoine said. "I've always been the best boxer ever to her. She lives for it because there's so much to live for.

"I had a friend tell me one time, she said, 'Man, you got to imagine how your mother feels, knowing that she birthed a child and abandoned that child. Maybe it wasn't intentional but (she did it). She didn't know that child she abandoned would grow up to be somebody this great.' And it dawned on me, like, damn, I'm that child."

Douglas said he and his dad have a great relationship, too. "That's where I get the mellow side of me," he said.

The fighter's goals in life extend far beyond boxing. "I want to save the world. I love all people and if God said, 'hey, Antoine, I need you to go do this and you would save the world', I'd put everything else aside and do it.

"I want to change the world and make it a better place. Boxing is boxing to me, but I want to be remembered as a legend in the sport. I want a legacy that never dies. I want kids to say, 'Do you remember Antoine "Action" Douglas?'

His story is pretty hard to forget.

(Photo of Douglas, left, and Khurtsidze by Amanda Wescott, Showtime)