Caleb Plant is a man minding his own business and staying in his lane.
But, often, trouble has gravitated toward the Nashville-born super middleweight, the everyman superstar who has become a cult hero for his never-back-down mentality, no matter the odds.
In July 2023, before Terence Crawford and Errol Spence fought in Las Vegas, Plant cracked Jermall Charlo with an open hand as they argued in the bowels of the T-Mobile Arena when Charlo put his hand in Plant’s face.
Nearly a year on, Edgar Berlanga got in his face – back in Vegas – and they shared an angry exchange, and when Gervonta Davis and Frank Martin fought, Plant was somehow dragged into an altercation with Ryan Garcia and his henchmen in the MGM Grand.
Plant did not give an inch on any occasion.
Even before that, there was a pre-fight rumble with Canelo Alvarez and genuine bad blood with Anthony Dirrell.
Now Plant’s brand has been built through the carnage, though he’d rather an online search that took the form ‘Caleb Plant – add Garcia/Berlanga/Charlo/Canelo/Dirrell altercation’ yield no results.
It is not how he wanted it to be.
“I try to handle my business inside the ring and I like to be left alone outside the ring,” Plant tells BoxingScene. “So as long as people leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone, you know.”
It sounds simple, yet it has been too hard for many to compute. They have veered into his lane, discussed his business and even his family, but in doing so Plant’s inability to cower submissively has made him a hero to those who might have shrunk in similar circumstances.
Of course, he won’t speak on what others might or might not do if faced with similar situations. Fight or flight is more reflex than flex. Until the circumstances face you, you won’t know what is in you. Like a fight.
“I feel like that’s an individual question for each individual, but, as far as I’m concerned, you know, I was raised a certain way by my grandfather and my father and they stand on certain principles as far as what they believe and how they believe they should be treated,” Plant adds. “And being bullied or harassed is not high on our list of things that we like. And so, if I ask somebody to leave me alone, it’s not really a request, you know what I’m saying? It’s a demand.”
The building of the brand might have indirectly been assisted, but it was never the aim, and it’s why Plant has not looked for trouble.
“I’ve never really thought too much about it or thought of it like that because, obviously in those moments I’m not looking to build my brand,” the 32-year-old continues. “I’m looking to get my point across when I can’t seem to get it across verbally. But yeah, I guess everybody out there likes to believe that they would stand their ground and take up for themselves, defend themselves if somebody is bullying them, harassing them or their family… their kids, their wife, whatever it may be. So yeah, maybe people like to see themselves in me through scenarios like that, perhaps.”
The easy going demeanour that Plant has in conversation means you can tell he’s not drawn to being boxing’s enforcer. He’s too modest and too unassuming, and you can see him cringe when he’s asked the kind of question you know, given everything he’s been through, he has little interest in.
Has he noticed the uptick in his popularity on social media from the viral moments in which he’s been involved?
“I’d like to think it’s from more of what I’ve done in the ring,” he says, clearly trying to keep the talk to boxing. “But I’m sure some of it has to do with me standing my ground in other scenarios. But I haven’t really given that a whole lot of thought, honestly.”
I don’t doubt that for a minute
MAKING BREAD
Both Plant and his trainer, Stephen “Breadman” Edwards, are men who prefer to let their actions speak for themselves. Their union, which started after Plant lost to Canelo Alvarez in November 2021, and has seen them work out of the popular DLX Boxing Gym in Las Vegas, where Plant now lives, on Saturday, May 31, they will step back into battle again, in the Michelob Arena, where Plant will face Jose Armando Resendiz.
Edwards calls Plant “a man of principle” and Plant said after Canelo, “a role needed to be filled” with Edwards working alongside Plant’s pops, Richie.
“Bread is someone that I've always admired from afar, and we’ve known each other for some time,” Plant says. “I’ve picked his brain and asked him about boxing questions where I wanted to see where his head was at and things I wanted to know. And I always liked his answers. I’ve always been a big fan of [Edwards-trained] Julian Williams. I feel like he’s always been a super-crafty fighter and always had a huge bag of tricks and also knew that he was a young trainer, or a younger trainer; someone who would probably want to work, who was eager and wanted to prove themselves. You know, sometimes older trainers have not much left in the tank, and they’re just kind of like… they don’t really care no more.
“But Bread, he’s the opposite of that. He cares, he wants to win, and he’ll go to the end of the earth to get the job done. And I’m the same type of way.”
The chemistry was there from the start, and it was their ability to focus on the finer details, small adjustments and additions, that have made him a more complete fighter.
Asked for details, Plant adds: “One, obviously the inside work, I feel like I showed that in my last fight [stopping Trevor McCumby], how much that has developed. And a lot of that has to do with Bread and a lot of that has to do with my dad too, because, between fights, I travel to Philly [where Edwards his from] here and there, and he’ll come to Vegas here and there. But for the most part, it’s been me and my dad in the gym grinding every day.
“And, Bread will pass him the notes and my dad will follow those notes, but he’s also adding his own twist to it. And my dad has a certain way that he likes to go about things and him [Bread] and my dad have great chemistry as well. That’s been a blessing, because sometimes when two trainers aren’t on the same page and they don’t have good chemistry, old heads get to arguing and not seeing eye to eye. Him and my dad are always reiterating the same things. And it’s just good chemistry.”
Edwards also had Plant sparring more in the downtime between fights, and that is no hardship for the Nashville hardman.
“I love sparring,” Plant smiles without hesitation. “Sparring is the best part. You put all the work in and you go to all the physical recovery and massage therapy and eating right and sleeping right and putting your best foot forward on everything so you can spar good. And then you spar good so you can fight good. So I really enjoy sparring. And he’s upped the sparring a lot on a day-to-day basis for me year-round. So I feel like that’s helped me.
THE SANCTUARY
Some 20 years ago, Richie Plant built a gym at the family home in Nashville, and Plant made that his nursery, but even before then Caleb had the taste for action by going to a boxing gym in the Rivergate area – a place off most Nashville tourist maps.
It was home to a cruiserweight fighter, Loren Ross – “Ross the Boss” – who had been on the army boxing team years earlier, and Plant would watch him shadow box, hit the bags and spar.
“And man, he was super smooth,” Plant smiles at the memory. “He had a great boxing IQ and was just really smart. And he’s the one who really like planted the seed of my dad’s brain too, because my dad was a fighter as well, but his defense wasn’t really… you know… all that. And my dad wanted me to have good defense. And when he took me to Loren Ross and the things that Loren first started showing me… how to box, how to move, my dad kind of took that and ran with it.”
Plant’s dad had been an amateur kickboxer, but things were not so straightforward with his mom.
The Plant family lived in a two-bed trailer in Ashland City on the Nashville outskirts and times were tough. The family were so poor, Plant – as a baby – slept in a dresser drawer rather than a crib.
His mom battled alcoholism and addiction and Caleb recalls frequent sounds of “yelling and breaking” in his childhood. While he concedes his mother was his No. 1 fan, he never wanted to be in a position where he had to clean up after her after she got high. In fact, the difficulties at home led Plant to move in with his grandparents, and his grandpop was a cowboy. Young Plant found a love of hunting, fishing, shooting, and riding horses, and enjoyed the quieter environs – away from the trauma of home.
But when his dad really started focusing on working with Caleb, things changed rapidly.
The Plant household developed its own facility – “a small rinky-dink gym” – and Plant would be out of school by 2.45pm, in the gym at 3.15pm, and he’d stay until 10.30pm. Six days a week.
At first, the floor was tiled and “the ring” was marked only by tape. The boxers would stand around the square holding hands to fill in for ropes and the kids would fight.
That was his routine, from the age of nine until Plant left school.
It was practice, it was repetition, it was life.
“But that was my sanctuary,” Plant admits. “That was my safe place, you know, not liking my home scenario very much. It was pretty chaotic and just feeling like a nobody really. Then, because of how much time I spent in the gym, it’s like I surpassed my peers pretty quickly. And now all of a sudden, I’m this kid in the gym who even like grown adults, grown folks are looking up to like, ‘Man, I want to be like him.’ ‘Man, I wish I could do this. I wish I could do that. Like him.’
“And now it’s like, all of a sudden I’m somebody and I’m somebody people want to be like, and then I leave the gym and I go back to being like somebody that nobody wants to be.”
It was never a pleasant transition. Life as society’s Clark Kent was far less fun, exciting, and rewarding. It was not like Plant was drunk on power from the gym, but he knew it gave him a self-worth that he had been unable to find outside of the ropes.
As a civilian, he was lost. It took going back to the gym to feel good about himself.
“And it just became this addictive drug for me where it’s the only thing I wanted to do and it is the only thing I thought about. And it’s the only place I wanted to be,” he continues.
“And it’s like, in the real world, you can’t always control what goes on. But in that boxing gym and that boxing ring, I have a lot of control. I have a lot of say with what can happen, what can go on… I can dictate a lot of things.
“And I just fell in love with that.”
He played little league football too, and was good, but he liked fighting more. He’d started football at seven, but before his freshman year his dad urged him to make a choice.
With school about to start, Richie said to Caleb: “’Hey buddy, you need to pick one. I know you’ve been playing football a long time. I know you love it.
“I know you’ve been fighting a long time. But you know, high school ball is going to be very demanding.
“Obviously fighting is very demanding too. So you can’t be great at everything. You need to pick one.’”
Caleb admits school was not for him. He didn’t like it and wasn’t good at it.
“I come from a small town,” he says. “There weren’t like a lot of big recruits [for football]. And I was like, ‘Man, I just want to box. I just want to fight.’”
At what point did Plant realize boxing was his ticket to a better life?
“Nine years old, nine years old,” he sighs. “That’s why I want to be a world champion.
“All I want to do is fight.”
NO PLAN B
Caleb Plant – a former IBF super middleweight champion – still has a dream. He wants to hold a world title overhead again, carry it in a locked case as luggage when he travels and show the belts to his kids when he’s an old man. It is as much a dream now as it was when he was a child.
How many left hooks did he throw in the mirror of that “rinky-dink gym?” How many shots has he taken? How many times has he tasted his own blood, or woken to run while the world sleeps, and put his courage to the test to achieve the dream?
Regardless of the specifics, the dream for Plant is the destination and the purpose of his colorful and emotional journey is a title.
“Ever since I was nine years old, that’s really all I wanted to be,” he says, a glint in his eye. “[It’s] what I wanted to do. And my dad will tell you that that’s God's honest truth. I knew since I was nine years old, like, ‘Man, this is what it’s going to be for me.’”
But the chances of making it to the top – and staying there – in this rocky business are slender. It’s not a question of slipping punches, but rolling with them outside of the sport, too. The likelihood of success is small, but Plant felt the odds were in his favor.
“I always knew I was going to be the one, even in middle school. My teacher came around once, I wasn't doing my work. I was filling out my autograph on a piece of paper. I filled up the whole sheet, turned it over, and I filled up the whole sheet with my autograph on the front and back. My teacher would come around and say, ‘What are you doing?’ I was like, ‘I’m practicing my autograph. I’m going to be a world champion one day.’ She’s like, ‘Well, what if boxing don’t work out? You need to plan B.’ I said, ‘No, boxing is going to work out. I don't need to plan B. I’m going to be a world champion.’”
He won the national Golden Gloves in 2011, an Olympic alternate in London in 2012, and fought in Nashville at the Bridgestone Arena in 2020 to defend his world title, and that same teacher updated her status on social media, telling the story of the stubborn kid who knew he was going to be a champion.
“I told him he needed to plan B,” she wrote. “And he told me, ‘No, I don’t. Boxing is going to work.’ And sure enough, if he didn’t go out there and become a world champion.” break
OUT OF THE DARKNESS
Plant might have always felt it was inevitable, that he could make his dreams factual, but to outsiders it was always a long shot. While his father might have tried to set him up for success, you could name scores of fighters who tried young, dazzled for a while, and ultimately faded, their dreams and ambitions condemned to a weary nostalgia of what they hoped life would be like and not what it had actually become.
Plant was different. He could feel it.
“For some reason,” he confides, “in my heart, no matter what was going on in my life, I just always had this thing in my chest pulling me towards it saying, ‘No matter what, if you keep going, you’re going to make it.’ And a lot of times that feeling kept me up at night. Sometimes it’s exhausting. And I still had that feeling in my chest like, ‘just keep going, just keep going, just keep going.’ It’s been exhausting so many times because it keeps me up at night and it’s just ongoing. It never goes away. But I just always knew like, man, it’s going to work out.”
And with the adversity he has faced, it would have been easy for him to have been blown off course, to join the wastelands of failed contenders and pretenders who didn’t have the gumption to see it through when the going got too tough or the spotlight shone too brightly.
And despite the hard exterior, Plant shares that there have been vulnerable moments. Despite being pushed in the face by a former champ, outnumbered by a boxing star and his goons, the bulletproof air Plant omits is in contrast to the considered man I’m in conversation with. He knows pain and he knows he can be hurt, but he also understands pain and loss and how those two horrible bedfellows have shaped what he has become.
In a glimpse into what life might have been like for Plant, in 2019, Plant’s mom pulled a knife on a cop and was shot and killed.
Four years before that, Plant had a daughter – Alia – who died in the winter of 2015 after an infection became pneumonia. She was just 19 months old. Alia had been born with a serious medical condition, suffered a heart-breaking decline and was on life-support four times. On the fifth occasion, with Alia at peace, Plant spoke to his baby, told her how proud he was of her and, at 10.55pm on January 29, the machines that were connected to the tubes and pumps that had been keeping her alive were turned off.
Plant has talked about those losses before, but there are other moments of anguish he won’t disclose.
“I mean, those are two experiences [his mom and daughter] that I’ve shared, but there’s a whole book of experiences that I haven't shared that are…” he pauses to think about his word selection. “You know, I’m sure a lot of other people go through things, but other experiences that may stop people from getting where they’re headed. But like I said, for some reason, I just always have this super strong feeling in my chest and my heart in my head that said, ‘Man, this is going to work. This is going to work.’ And I feel like those experiences, the ones I’ve shared and the ones that I haven’t, they prepared me. They’ve strengthened me. They’ve made me tough. They made me… what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And anytime I fell short outside of the ring or inside the ring, I never felt like, ‘Man, I’m a step further away.’ I always felt like, ‘Man, I’m a step closer now. I’m a step closer.’
Wanting a new start, Plant moved to Las Vegas to put the darkness behind him.
“And, yeah, I think those experiences definitely toughened me and made me the man that I am today and made me strong enough to have the attitude and the mindset and the fortitude that I have to, no matter what, man, you got to keep pressing on. You got to keep putting one foot in front of the other.” break
THE TASK AT HAND
The next foot goes in front of the other at the Michelob Arena on Saturday night. Resendiz will be hoping to knock Plant off both feet, but the Mexican is a prohibitive underdog.
Plant is, again, the man with the target on his back. He has the Charlo fight waiting for him and the bounty that contest would finally promise. Resendiz is merely in the supporting cast of the overall story, but the Mexican knows it’s his chance to become a main character. Plant understands that, too.
“This is his moment,” Plant shrugs. “And I remember what it was like for me and my first big moment, how bad I wanted it and how much I knew like, ‘Man, if I get over this hump, if I get through this – which I know I will – then man, my life’s going to change forever.’ And I’m assuming that he’s feeling the same way. So I know how much he wants it, but it’s not his time. It’s not his moment. This isn’t his story. This is my story. And May 31st, I’m gonna step on him for trying to mess up everything that I worked towards. I’m gonna step on him.”
As you would expect from Plant, he is not excited to talk about Charlo. If they get to it eventually, he will have more to say, but for now it takes a couple of questions to get even a quiet rumble and rise from Plant. He has business at hand first, and Charlo is not it.
“It’s not something I'm thinking about too much right now,” Plant says, shaking his head. “You know, there’s been so many fighters who have been in the same situation. It’s like, they put them on the same card. They both win that fight. Then they got the superfight. They got the megafight. And there always seems to be – not always, but too many times – where one person is focusing on that big fight and not the fight in front of them. All fights are big fights. All fights are tough fights. There are no easy fights. There are fights you can make easy, but no fight is easy. And training camp isn’t easy and the sacrifices aren’t easy.
“So I need to focus on the task in front of me right now. I need to focus on the fight in front of me. I’m gonna step on him May 31st. And then there’ll be plenty of time to talk about Charlo, think about Charlo, prepare for Charlo, whatever the situation, whatever the case may be. But right now, I need to focus on the task at hand because focus is what gets the job done.”
Would he like the opportunity to “step on Charlo” though?
“If he makes it to the ring, I'll step on him too,” Plant adds, happily enough. “I’ve stepped on him once. I’ll step on him again.”
But, for now, Caleb Plant is minding his own business and staying in his lane.