By Dan Ambrose: Caleb ‘Sweethands’ Plant says he’s ready to beat Canelo Alvarez in consecutive fights if he wants a rematch after he beats him on November 6th in their undisputed 168-lb championship in Las Vegas.
IBF super middleweight champion Plant (21-0, 12 KOs) is confident that he’s going to relieve Canelo (56-1-2, 38 KOs) of his WBA, WBC & WBO titles in their fight on FOX Sports PPV, and then it’ll be up to him if he wants to fight a rematch or not.
Plant says if Canelo chooses not to fight him a second time, he’s going to move on and defeat former two-time WBC super middleweight champion David Benavidez, and then Jermall Charlo.
Wins over those big three – Benavidez, Canelo, and Charlo – will cement Plant as one of the best fighters of this generation.
We’re going to soon find out if Plant has the goods to beat the ‘Face of Boxing’ Canelo on November 6th, as he’s a huge underdog going into this contest against the popular Mexican superstar.
Plant: Canelo is beatable
“We’d have a deal, and then he’d come back for more. We’d have a deal, then he’d come back for more,” said Caleb Plant to the PBC Podcast when asked if there was ever any doubt whether the fight with Canelo would happen.
“I think he found out that I’m not a fighter that he can just push around and bully. And I can’t control what other people say about me. I can only control what I do.
“He did what he had to do,” said Plant on his assessment of Canelo’s performance in his last fight against former WBO super middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders last May.
“Until then, Billy Joe was having a lot of success doing a lot of things, but he got caught by a shot. That can happen to anybody in boxing at any time.
“That doesn’t mean he’s [Canelo] unbeatable. He’s been beaten before, and honestly, he’s looked beatable in a lot of his biggest fights.
“He [Canelo] looked beatable against [Erislandy] Lara, he got schooled by Floyd [Mayweather Jr.], and he lost his first fight to GGG [Gennadiy Golovkin].
“It was a really close fight the second time, and it was a really close fight with him and [Sergey] Kovalev.
“So him and anyone else and the fans or anybody else in boxing, they’re not going to be able to convince me that the guy [Alvarez] is unbeatable, and this is some kind of David vs. Goliath story. That’s not my mentality going into this fight,” Plant said.
We’ve already seen that Canelo is beatable in a half dozen of his fights during his 16-year professional career. It’s pretty obvious that Canelo should have at least have six losses on his resume against these fighters if not generous scoring by the judges:
- Floyd Mayweather Jr
- Gennadiy Golovkin x 2
- Miguel Cotto
- Austin Trout
- Erislandy Lara
Caleb says he holds advantages over Alvarez
“Well, there’s a list of things,” said Plant when asked what separates him from Billy Joe Saunders.
“This isn’t a knock on Billy Joe Saunders. These are things he said himself, leaving into the Canelo fight. ‘I haven’t always been as disciplined as I should, but I’m here now.’
“Those were his words. You would never hear me say something like that because I’m always doing what I’m supposed to be doing, I’m always on my game.
“Just my discipline, my boxing ability, my boxing IQ, my mentality, my mental fortitude, everything.
“When you’ve been doing everything right for 17 years and you have so much confidence going into a fight, you almost feel like you can’t be beaten.
“When you haven’t been doing everything you have to go up to your big moment, you’re going to be thinking about those things and they’re going to have an effect on you.
“I feel like I have a lot of advantages,” said Plant when asked where does he feel he has advantages over Canelo in his game.
“I’m not going to speak on those advantages, but if you guys want to figure it out or see it for yourself, you can tune in on November 6th.
“There are a lot of things I hold over Canelo, and there are a lot of things that I possess over him that I can do better than he does,” Plant said.
Plant has a number of advantages over Canelo, and it’s going to be tough on the Mexican star to overcome them all.
Caleb’s advantages:
- Size
- Speed
- Youth
- Mobility
- Jab
- Ring IQ
Canelo is good at pounding away at fighters that stand immobile or if they come straight at him looking to slug it out. As a counter puncher by trade, Canelo has always thrived against fighters that go to war with him.
Canelo can be beaten by fighters with a high work rate, but he fought anyone like that during his career. If there was a fighter that had Aaron Pryor type of nonstop punching style, Canelo would run out of gas and be left in a ditch.
The other type of fighter that Canelo has had problems with is the pure boxer, who stays on the outside, using his jab and giving him nothing to counter.
We saw Mayweather, Austin Trout, Erislandy Lara, and Gennadiy Golovkin get the better of Canelo with their outside games. Interestingly, Golovkin, Trout, and Lara were all arguably robbed against Canelo, as was Miguel Cotto.
It’s hard to beat the ‘Face of Boxing’ by a decision, which is why Plant is going to have to really make it one-sided for him to have a shot at winning a decision on November 6th against Canelo.
‘Sweethands’ criticizes Canelo
“I think he’s made some adjustments but I’m also not those fighters either,” Plant said when asked if Canelo has improved since he fought Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Erislandy Lara.
“Those guys fight at 147 and 154, and I’m a lot bigger than those guys naturally, a lot taller, a lot longer.
“There’s a lot of things that I possess over those guys that gave him trouble as well that he’s going to find out about real soon.
“I don’t know about that,” Plant said when asked if he thinks Canelo might be a tad overrated.
“All I know is on November 6th I’m going to get my hand raised, and it’s going to be an easier fashion than people expect. I’m going to become the first undisputed super middleweight of all time.
“Like with Callum Smith, he’ll know when he’s going to fight but no one else will know. Then five weeks before the fight, he’ll be trying to make a mega-fight happen,” said Plant about Canelo Alvarez choosing to give his opponents a short preparation time to train by setting up fights with them on short notice.
“That’s only four weeks of training because the last week you’re not doing too much. So it’s like if you’re the pound-for-pound best and you’re so confident of your ability and your skills, why do you have to give everybody half a camp to be the pound-for-pound star?
“I’m just excited about the fight being here and excited about listening to people say when they announce ‘And the new and still undefeated,'” said Plant.
Being the A-side gives Canelo the advantage of being able to pick out his opponents at the last minute, giving them a short training camp to prepare.
When you’re being given a ‘take it or leave it’ offer for a big money fight with Canelo, obviously these fighters aren’t going to say no to the fight.
Canelo doesn’t take heat for doing this because the casual boxing fans have no clue. Other things like using rehydration clauses and catchweights are also stuff that the casual fans have no idea about.
Plant knew he would fight Canelo
“There was a point in time where he wasn’t close to my weight division or I didn’t feel like that we would be stepping into the ring together,” said Plant when asked if he ever thought that he would face Canelo one day.
“I don’t really think about every little step along the way. I think about my long-term goals and what I want to do overall in the sport, and then I focus on what I want to do next.
“As his career progressed and as my career progressed, I felt like at some point me and him in there making this fight happen and doing it for the undisputed.
“I sacrificed everything for this and I’ve dedicated my whole life to this sport. This moment means everything to me. It’s my life’s work coming down to one moment, and I’m going to seize it and I’m going to grab it.
“I don’t do anything besides boxing. And I don’t go to the club, I don’t stay up, and I don’t hang out. I go to the gym and I go home,” said Plant.
“Maybe that’s not cool to people, but my whole life revolves around boxing. My wife is a boxing reporter, my father is a boxing coach.
“My mother loves boxing. That’s all we talk about, that’s all we think about, and that’s all we do.
“This is something that has always come naturally for me and is easy for me since I picked up the sport. As soon as I picked it up, I felt this was all I wanted to be,” Plant said.
If not for Canelo choosing to try and become the undisputed champion at 168, Plant would have never had a chance to fight him.
With Plant’s tricky style of fighting, Canelo would have likely never looked his way for a fight.
Caleb ready to beat Canelo twice
“Tune in on November 6th and I’ll elaborate,” said Plant when asked to respond to his comments he made recently to the media about the Canelo fight being a lot easier than people thought.
“I can assure you that I’m nobody to play with, and if he [Canelo] feels he has an easy fight on his hands, I can assure you that he has another thing coming.
“If you don’t want to believe me or take my word for it, then please, please tune in on November 6th because there’s going to be a new sheriff in town.
“By the time it’s all said and done. I’ll beat Canelo Alvarez, and if he wants a rematch that has to be done, I’ll beat him twice.
“I’ll beat Benavidez, I’ll beat Charlo and I’ll be crowned as one of the greatest fighters of this era, period.
“I’m doing everything in my power from here until then every day to make sure I accomplish that and do that. Those are the goals that I’ve seen on, and I don’t plan on letting anybody or anything to get in the way,” said Plant.
It’s likely that Canelo will want a rematch against Plant if he loses to him on November 6th. If Canelo were to lose badly against someone like David Benavidez, Artur Beterbiev, Dmitry Bivol, Jermall Charlo or Demetrius Andrade, he probably wouldn’t insist on a rematch. But against Plant, Canelo will likely insist on a second fight.