Jose Benavidez Sr. hoping Caleb Plant doesn’t “Back out” of fight with David

By Boxing News - 03/13/2022 - Comments

By Allan Fox: Jose Benavidez Sr. hopes that Caleb ‘Sweethands’ Plant doesn’t back out of the negotiations for a fight against his son David Benavidez for a match in September.

If Plant takes this fight, he would rate a lot of respect from boxing fans for not insisting on taking a tune-up after his recent 11th round TKO loss to Canelo Alvarez.

The former IBF super middleweight champion Plant (21-1, 12 KOs) recently entered into talks for a big contest against the former two-time WBC 168-lb champion Benavidez (25-0, 22 KOs).

Jose Sr. says the fight talks with Plant, 29, came out of nowhere this week, surprising him. It’s a fight that he wants for his son Benavidez, who is rated #1 in the 168-lb division in the eyes of many boxing fans.

They collectively believe that undisputed champion Canelo Alvarez is running scared of Benavidez, going out of his way to dodge him, even to the point where he’s going up to 175 to pick off a weak champion in Dmitry Bivol.

Comments from Caleb Plant this week on Twitter:

“Fatboy [Benavidez] can’t f*** with me. Yeah. and I smacked the s*** outta Jose Jr and instead of trying to get his get back on me, he just turned and tried to get off on my boxing coach and David [Benavidez] just stood there like a BIG FAT P**** and did NOTHING. None of them did s***.”

As you can see, Plant is freely talking trash about Benavidez, and his brother Jose Jr, letting boxing fans know how little he thinks of them as a whole.

It would look bad at this point if Plant slinked away, going in the opposite directions towards the weak opposition that he fought to get his big payday fight against Canelo last November.

It’s fair to say that Plant didn’t represent himself well in his fight with Canelo, choosing to run, and at one point in the ninth round asking the Mexican star for affirmation about his talent.

Benavidez feels that Plant looking for emotional support from Canelo during the ninth round was a sign of 100% weakness on his part, and flat-out embarrassing.

Jose Benavidez Jr reacts to Plant 

“It came out of the blue,” Benavidez said of Plant’s comment. “That’s why I got together with Luis De Cubas [Jr.] yesterday,” said Jose Sr. on Instagram about a fight between Plant and David Benavidez.

Image: Jose Benavidez Sr. hoping Caleb Plant doesn't "Back out" of fight with David

“We’re trying to make it happen. It shouldn’t be hard. We share the same promotional company.

“Hopefully that guy doesn’t back out,” Benavidez Sr. continued.

“We want to make [the Plant fight] in September. David is gonna win on May 21st,” said Jose Sr. in referring to Benavidez’s WBC 168-lb title eliminator against David Lemieux.

“If we can stop him earlier than he did against Canelo, that’s good for us,” Benavidez Sr. said. “He’s [Plant] a good fighter. He moves around. We want to make a good statement,’ said Jose Sr.

Benavidez still needs to defeat former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux in their WBC 168-lb title eliminator fight on May 21st for him to be free to potentially fight Plant in September.

That’s expected to be a total mismatch, but with the kind of power that the 33-year-old Lemieux possesses, the contest does have a degree of risk involved.

With the way Benavidez squares himself up on his opponents and unloads with nonstop punches without carrying about what’s coming back at him, he could potentially get stopped by Lemieux.

I don’t see it happening, but this is boxing and you never know, especially when dealing with a puncher with the type of power that Lemieux (43-4, 36 KOs) possesses.

It would be a massive comeback for Lemieux if he were to defeat Benavidez, as the Canadian fighter’s career has gone downhill since his eighth round knockout loss to Gennadiy Golovkin in May 2015. Even before that, Lemieux’s star had dimmed after his back-to-back defeats against Marco Antonio Rubio and Joachim Alcine in 2011.