By Sean Jones: Canelo Alvarez vs. Caleb ‘Sweethands’ Plant did approximately 800,000 pay-per-view buys on SHOWTIME last Saturday night.
What these numbers show is that Canelo (57-1-2, 39 KOs) can bring in excellent numbers, even when he’s facing a guy that casual boxing fans have never seen or heard of before. Plant was a no-name before fighting Canelo, but it didn’t matter.
If Canelo can bring in those kinds of numbers against an average fighter, imagine the numbers he’ll bring in when he faces David Benavidez or Jermall Charlo. Those guys would bring in well over 1 million PPV buys if Canelo dared to fight them.
Very few casual boxing fans had ever heard of Plant, largely because he’d never fought an A-level opponent during his seven-year professional career. Plant’s best win of his career was against Jose Uzcategui, and he looked terrible in that fight.
According to sources for Dan Rafael, the Canelo – Plant pulled in around 800K buys, which are good numbers, considering that the boxing public wasn’t demanding this fight.
Former IBF super middleweight champion Plant (21-1, 12 KOs) wasn’t a household name going into the fight, so basically the numbers that pulled in likely were from boxing fans that wanted to see Canelo and didn’t care who he was fighting.
It could have been Avni Yildirim or one of the obscure champions at 168 that Canelo beat recently and the fans still would have purchased the fight.
Hopkins says Canelo whooped Plant
“It wasn’t his best, he had to figure some things out,” said Bernard Hopkins to Fighthype on Canelo’s performance against Plant.
“Plant did some good heart and some good determination, and he did a couple of good fluid moves. Canelo had some problems with the angles. It worked for Plant, but he couldn’t maintain it.
“You’ve got to look at some of the opponents in that weight division that are going to look at that and take some lessons and see where Canelo had his problems at and trying to manifest it.
“I don’t know if it’s Jermall Charlo or somebody else in that weight division that he’s planning on fighting. But Canelo did what I expected him to do, seek and destroy.
“Canelo has no competition right know,” said Hopkins when asked who can give Alvarez problems. “I wasn’t surprised what Canelo did, and I don’t say that to down Plant. I thought he did a great job.
Bernard impressed by Canelo
“I don’t think anybody thought that Plant had a shot to beat Canelo, and I don’t think anybody thought it was going to be an upset. He [Plant] basically got his a** whooped.
“Do you get rewards for getting your a** whooped? I don’t think so. I wasn’t impressed with Plant’s performance. Canelo did what he had to do.
“Initially, I thought he was carrying [Plant], but eventually, I realized he was having problems with his style. Plant was doing a couple of things that Canelo was having problems with when he fought Floyd.
“I seen some things that he was doing to make Canelo confused, but as far as everything else, I saw a workman’s job that he was beating him down round by round.
“The biggest achievement was Canelo became the undisputed champion in the shortest people of time,” said Hopkins about Canelo.
It’s easy for popular fighters like Canelo that bring a lot of money to the table for their opponents to get champions to be willing to fight him.
Hopkins didn’t point out the obvious by mentioning that when you bring in the kind of money that Canelo does, of course, you’re going to be able to capture titles quickly, especially when you’re going after weak champions.
Come on, we didn’t see Canelo trying to become the undisputed champion when Benavidez held the WBC 168-lb title. If Canelo goes up to 175 and attempts to repeat his feat from the 168-lb division by trying to become undisputed, we’ll see if he enjoyed the same success.
