Career
His amateur career was crowned by a bronze medal for Ireland in the middleweight division at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. Provincial and national titles
He faced Edward Healy in the 2006 and 2007 Final and Darren O"Neill in 2008 winning all three. He was the third ranked European boxer in the middleweight division.
He lost at the first qualifier to English southpaw James DeGale 22:23 but qualified by winning a gold medal as the second Olympic qualifier for Europe.
In the final he stopped Jean-Mickaël Raymond. World amateur championship results
2005
Defeated Badrakh Ganbold (Mongolia) RSCO 2
Defeated Edwin Rodriguez (United States) RSCO 2
Lost to Matvey Korobov (Russia) RSCO 3
2007
Defeated Roy Cooke (Dominica) walk-over
Defeated Andranik Hakobyan (Armenia) 22-20
Lost to Alfonso Blanco (Venezuela) 13-20
Sutherland reached the semi-finals of the boxing tournament in the 2008 Olympics and took a bronze medal.
He lost his fight to James DeGale in the semi-finals 10-3. Sutherland announced that it was his last ever amateur boxing match.
Olympic results
2008
1st round bye
Defeated Nabil Kassel (Algeria) Royal Society of Chemistry 4
Defeated Alfonso Blanco (boxer) (Venezuela) 11-1
Lost to James DeGale (Great Britain) 3-10
Following the exposure gained at the Olympics, Sutherland was offered a number of contracts as a professional boxer.
In October 2008 he signed terms with London-based promoter Frank Maloney. On 18 December 2008, Sutherland made a winning start to his professional career with a first round knockout of Georgi Iliev in Dublin. After the bout, Sutherland"s promoter Frank Maloney said "I think we"ve found a real superstar here tonight and this is just the start of a long journey".
His next fight, against Siarhei Navarka on 6 March at Robin Park Arena in Wigan, ended with Sutherland winning by a third round stoppage.
On 14 September 2009, Sutherland was found dead with his wrists bound at his apartment in Bromley by his promoter, Frank Maloney. lieutenant was alleged he died by hanging himself.
He suffered from depression. Olympic gold medalist, James Degale commented on the death stating: "lieutenant is very, very sad news - I just can"t believe it, lieutenant is a tragedy.
First and foremost, my heart goes out to his family.
I just could not believe lieutenant My heart went to the floor when I heard. I just do not know what to say except that he was a brilliant fighter, in fact an excellent fighter, and he was a gentleman outside the ring as well.
He had an Olympic bronze medal and his whole life to look forward to
He had a great future, and my heart goes out to everyone who knew him." At the time, he was dating Irish model Hazel O"Sullivan. He was exhumed in September 2010 for a further private postmortem at the request of his family.
An open verdict was delivered at the inquest in March 2012.