Caleb Plant’s win over Trevor McCumby last weekend made him a solid option for Canelo Alvarez’s next fight in May. Former IBF super middleweight champion Plant is the ideal opponent for Canelo for those interested.
Canelo has reached the point where, at 168, he has few options left for marketable flights that the public is interested in watching. The talented fighters that can give Canelo problems, such as Christian Mbilli and Osley’s Inglesiasis not well-known enough to attract PPV purchases from the American public. Those guys are probably better fighters than Plant and will probably knock him out, but they don’t have his name recognition.
If Canelo stays at 168, he’ll need an opponent next May who can generate hype, talk trash, and get people interested. That’s where Plant comes in.
Plant (23-2, 14 KOs) won the WBA interim super middleweight title with a ninth-round knockout of McCumby last Saturday night at the Canelo vs. Edgar Berlanga undercard in Las Vegas. This win for Plant puts him in position for a rematch with Canelo, who holds the WBA belt.
“I thought, ‘No way, no one wanted to see this,’ and then I saw how popular he was this weekend. I was like, ‘Oh, no, it could definitely happen,'” Chris Algieri said Inner box Live on Caleb Plant’s performance against Trevor McCumby last Saturday, making him a viable option for a rematch with Canelo Alvarez.
Plant’s fight against McCumby stole the show on last weekend’s Canelo-Berlanga card at the T-Mobile Arena. The way Plant rallied after being dropped and injured by McCumby was impressive. Granted, it didn’t look good for Plant to go up against a fighter with a one-dimensional game like McCumby, but that’s the type of fighter Plant is. He’s not the best at 168, but he makes his fights interesting.
“Canelo is getting into an area where he’s going to have rematches with Plant and Munguia,” Algieri said. “It’s only a matter of time before one of these guys beats him. Caleb Plant looked so good this weekend. It looked to me like he fought Canelo; he wasn’t ready for that level of a guy. I think he learned a lot from that fight that he brought into the Benavidez fight.”
Plant has not improved since his 11th round knockout loss to Canelo in November 2021. The shots that hurt Canelo Plant in that fight would have done the same thing to him if he had fought him last weekend. McCumby hurt Plant, but didn’t have the punching arsenal to finish him. Canelo took advantage of Plant’s habit of bending over by nailing him with uppercuts and would likely exploit that same weakness in a rematch.
“If he was the same guy that fought Canelo, he would have been stopped by Benavidez because he got hit late but held on through it. Against Canelo he didn’t. He crumbled under the pressure. Since then, he seems to have learned a lot. You bring it into a rematch with Canelo, and now Canelo is three years older. Canelo is going to lose one of these days. He is getting older. It shows,” Algieri said.
