By Allan Fox: IBF super middleweight champion Caleb ‘Sweethands’ Plant is ultra-confident of defeating Canelo Alvarez on November 6th to become the first 4-belt undisputed champion.
Plant has got the Mayweather moves, great jab, and he could give Canelo a lot of problems if he can avoid getting caught by one of his big shots.
We saw what Mayweather did to Canelo in 2013, beating him with ease, and making him look like an amateur.
Plant (21-0, 12 KOs) says he doesn’t have to do anything special to defeat WBA/WBC/WBO champion Canelo (56-1-2, 38 KOs) other than showing up being ‘Caleb Plant’, and that’ll be enough.
Canelo vs. Plant will be taking place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The fight will be shown on FOX Sports pay-per-view.
The winner of this contest will briefly be viewed as the #1 guy at 168 until they prove themselves against David Benavidez, who is vying to unseat the last man standing.
“November 6th it’s going down. The first undisputed middleweight of all time, and you’re looking at him. His name is Caleb Plant,” said Plant to Fox Sports.
“I just got to go out and be myself,” said a self-assured Plant. “I feel like I’ve got every tool in the bag to make that happen, and my downfall would be to go out there and be anyone but myself. Come November, you guys tune in. It’s going to be a show,” said Plant.
Of the fighters Canelo has fought in recent years, Plant is arguably the proudest of the bunch.
He REALLY believes he’s going to win, and he doesn’t seem to care that he lacks the credentials on paper to back up his claims.
As long Plant doesn’t run out of gas or all become stationary, we could see him beat the superstar Canelo.
With that said, Plant hasn’t fought the type of opposition as a professional to prove that he can beat Canelo, and that’s too bad because this fight could be so much bigger if he had a proven record of great wins.
It would be great if Plant had at least one big win over someone that would get the boxing world seeing this as a 50-50 affair instead of an 80-20 in Canelo’s favor.
“Personally, I don’t think anyone is beating Canelo,” said MP Promotions President Sean Gibbons to ESNEWS. “I love Caleb Plant, a great fighter.
“I hope he performs well. It’s not a knock on Caleb Plant. It’s just Canelo. I thought Billy Joe Saunders was a really good fighter, and he was.
“He hung in there until Canelo broke him down and it was over. I see Caleb having some success early. He can box, but Canelo is the best student right now,” said Gibbons.
You can’t compare Saunders to a fighter like Plant because the two are entirely different, and on opposites of the spectrum.
Besides Saunders being older than the 29-year-old Plant, he also had a lot of bad habits inside the ring that was ideal for Canelo to take advantage of.
For example, Saunders was leaning forward with his hands down hanging down by his sides throughout his fight with Canelo earlier this year on May 8th.
Canelo resisted exploiting this flaw through the first seven rounds, but in the eighth, he finally nailed Saunders with an uppercut that shattered his left orbital bone.
The fight had to be stopped in between rounds because Saunders’ vision was impaired and he needed saving.
“First of all, he already proved himself at 175 against Kovalev,” said Gibbons about Canelo. “I don’t think he [Canelo] has anything to prove right now, and if he moves up, the guys up there [cruiserweight] are a lot bigger,” Gibbons said in saying it’s a bad idea for Canelo to move up to cruiserweight to try and become a five-division world champion.
“So I think what he did at 175, he felt it. His titles are at 154, 160, 168, and 175.
“To go up another division [to cruiserweight] is too much weight. He’s [Canelo] already doing a good job of carrying it. Manny is known around the world. Canelo has a great following,” said Gibbons.
In theory, Canelo could move up to cruiserweight and likely capture a world title against WBC champion Ilunga Makabu or Ryad Merhy.
But if Canelo were to take on IBF champion Mairis Briedis or WBO champ Lawrence Okolie, it would likely end badly for him against either of those two.
They hit too hard, and they would force Canelo into a war. If Canelo were to move up, he would probably choose the softer targets Makabu or Merhy.