As the saying goes, it’s not always about if you win but how you win that matters inside the squared circle. 

IBF super middleweight titleholder Caleb Plant would probably agree with that dictum as it relates to his forthcoming full unification title bout against boxing kingpin Canelo Alvarez, who owns the WBC/WBO/WBA belts, on Nov. 6 in Las Vegas. The fight will headline a Showtime Pay-Per-View card.

Though Plant (21-0, 12 KOs) figures to be a sizable underdog in the bout, the Nashville native is not lacking for confidence. Certainly, it seems that he has not been swayed by all the pound-for-pound discourse in recent years that has seemingly given Alvarez an aura of invincibility.

“He’s been beat before,” Plant said on the PBC Podcast. “Honestly he’s looked beatable in a lot of his bigger fights.” 

Alvarez, of course, has only lost once in the professional ranks, which came at the hands of Floyd Mayweather in 2013. His win against Erislandy Lara, in a 154-pound title fight, in 2014, was also close and controversial. More recently, Alvarez drew with Gennadiy Golovkin in their middleweight title matchup in 2017, a fight many believed the Kazakh deserved to win; their rematch was also a close affair, but Alvarez wound up earning a decision. 

“He looked beatable against Lara,” Plant said. “He got schooled by Floyd [Mayweather]. He lost the first fight to Triple G [note: the fight ended in a draw] and it was a really close fight the second time. It was a really close fight with him and [Sergey] Kovalev as well." 

Alvarez (56-1-2, 38 KOs) knocked out Kovalev in the 11th round of their light heavyweight title tilt in 2019, in what was Alvarez’s first foray at 175. 

“[Alvarez] nor anyone else, any of his fans, is going to be able to convince me that the guy is unbeatable, that this is some David and Goliath story,” Plant continued. “That’s not my mentality going into this fight.”

Plant also thinks Billy Joe Saunders, Alvarez’s last opponent, gave the Mexican a run for his money for as long as that fight lasted. Alvarez stopped Saunders inside eight rounds in their super middleweight title bout last May. Saunders suffered a broken orbital bone in that fight. 

“I thought Billy Joe was having a lot of success and doing a lot of good things,” said Plant. “But he got caught with a shot and that can happen to anybody in boxing at any time. That doesn’t mean that [Canelo’s] unbeatable.”