Caleb Plant has never let life’s challenges knock him off course for long. He doesn’t intend to start now.
The 30-year-old super middleweight contender was stopped in the 11th round by Canelo Alvarez last November, his first career setback. He acknowledges the disappointment of losing his biggest fight and his precious IBF title. Who wouldn’t struggle with that?
The key for him was to learn from it and move forward, without adjusting his goals. He still plans to gain recognition as a special fighter.
“It obviously was difficult,” Plant told Boxing Junkie a week before his comeback fight against Anthony Dirrell on the Deontay Wilder-Robert Helenius pay-per-view card Saturday in Brooklyn, New York.
“I’m a winner, whether that’s been in the ring or outside the ring. I feel like I’m a winner. I feel like anything that’s been tossed my way is something I’ve been able to overcome. …
“I feel some [of Alvarez’s] past opponents have showed up for the check. I didn’t do that. I was there to win. That didn’t happen, so it was disappointing. That being said, I’m not one to sit around and feel sorry for myself.
“I took a small break then I got right back to work with my team.”
Besides, Plant (21-1, 12 KOs) said, he gave a good account of him.
The Las Vegas-based Tennessean was behind on all three official cards after 10 rounds – 98-92, 97-93 and 96-94 – before Alvarez hurt him with a left hook-right uppercut combination and then finished him off. However, Plant, an excellent boxer and athlete, was competitive until the end. That can’t be said of many Alvarez opponents.
That’s something on which he can build in an effort to realize his full potential.
“If that the highest level of boxing, I feel I’m that close from it,” said Plant, holding his thumb and pointer a centimeter apart. “I got caught with a good shot at the end but until then I thought I was doing really, really good. [That’s] not just myself, but from the rest of the fans … from what I’ve seen them say.
“I want to just continue to smooth the edges of my game, to try to make it a complete game.”
Plant (21-1, 12 KOs) is anything but complacent in spite of his recent success.
He made a reported $10 million for the fight with Alvarez, which is 140 times as much as the average American earns in a year. He acknowledged that the event was “good to me” in that sense. However, he said, “That doesn’t do it for me.”
And the fact he already realized the dream shared by all fighters – which was the win a world title – makes him no less hungry than he was before he became champion. He’s thinking much bigger than that.
“Becoming a world champion. as rare as that is, was A dream, not THE dream,” he said. “THE dream is to be solidified as one of greatest of my generation and go down as one of greats of boxing. … Just becoming a world champion isn’t going to do that.
“There’s no one specific thing that I’m going to do other than just continue to be the best possible version of myself, to continue to get big fights, win big fights, to become a two-time world champion and continue on to become unified champion and undisputed.
“Those are still my dreams, still my goals.”
There’s one more objective: A second shot at Alvarez.
“We all have long term and short term goals,” Plant said. “My main goal, so close to this fight, is to focus on the fight in front of me. … It’s hard to say what the road will look like but it would be to do whatever I need to to get a rematch with Canelo, then pick off one top super middleweight at a time. That’s what I want.”
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