Caleb Plant “Gets” it, Boxing Stardom Is About The Fans

Caleb Plant “gets” it. He gets the cold, hard reality that in boxing, unless you’re one of the divinely blessed .01%, you have to work your ass off to attain any sort of real, sustainable star power,

And while the former IBF super middleweight champ is not an elite-level superstar (and never was), his star power has actually risen after crushing defeats that normally would’ve relegated a fighter to no-buzz mid-card spots and one-foot-out-the-door status.

Plant has stayed relevant after being stopped by Canelo Alvarez and pummeled by David Benavidez because he’s kept himself in the public line of sight. He gives interviews, speaks to media outlets of all sizes, and just keeps his voice out there. And, because he keeps his voice “out there,” he sometimes finds himself in public beefs with other public boxing figures, like Ryan Garcia and Jermall Charlo.

Most endearingly for this particular writer, when he speaks, he actually SAYS something and doesn’t stick to the usual, boring, my-publicist-taught-me-to-say-this fluff.

For instance, there’s his latest media appearance on The Breakfast Club, where he took aim at Edgar Berlanga and the whole silly promotion-generated narrative that the Brooklynite actually put in a sound effort against Canelo Alvarez this past September 14.

“I thought it was a one-sided whooping. He might have won maybe a round,” Plant said.

“A lot of people expected Berlanga to get stopped halfway through the fight in rounds six or eight, something like that. He made it through. Is that the level of respect now? It doesn’t matter if he wins a round as long as he survives. Not really.

“I’m not here to brag about who lost the best against Canelo because that seems silly, but at the same time, I definitely won more rounds, and I went out on my shield trying to win as opposed to yip-yapping the whole lead-up and then for the most part, keeping my hands in my pocket the whole fight.”

It’s sad that we’re getting more proper perspective from a fighter than from the media that’s actually paid to provide proper perspective, but that’s where we find ourselves.

“He’s [Berlanga] the big, bad wolf, who says he punchers harder than GGG, but he’s the one that was getting walked down the whole fight. It’s not like he stuck and moved, boxed and used his skills. Canelo was just walking him down the whole fight.

“When it’s 10-0, and it’s the 11th round, and you haven’t won one round, it’s time to put it all on the line. If you get stopped, it’s part of the game. How many legendary fighters have been stopped? Just go out on your shield; who cares? But his ego wouldn’t allow him to do that. He’d rather stay clean and pretty. No, I don’t really respect that.”

Bravo. But even if Plant wasn’t speaking the truth, just being out there, speaking, and saying something worth hearing, is commendable.

And from the way he had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand, cheering his every bit of posturing against Trevor McCumby on the Canelo-Berlanga undercard (probably getting the loudest positive reaction of anyone on the card other than Canelo), it’s clear that boxing fandom is also appreciating Plant for just being around and speaking to them.

His future purses and the future opportunities that pop up for him should show how well he’s reaping the rewards from his media savvy.

Other fighters would do well to stop filling their social media spaces with whining and actually work to get themselves out there for the fans.