About eight days after it was announced, the Caleb Plant-Trevor McCumby super middleweight contest slated for August 17 at the Caribe Royale Resort in Orlando, Florida is now off.
According to Mike Coppinger at ESPN, McCumby suffered a cut over his right eye in training that necessitated a withdrawal from the bout.
Rather than look for a replacement opponent on a little over three weeks notice, event organizers Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) opted to just postpone the entire show. The 168 lb. contest was designated to be for the vacant WBA interim super middleweight title and set to headline the first non-PPV event in PBC’s run on Amazon Prime Video.
Both Plant and McCumby were looking forward to this main event tussle as a comeback fight.
Plant would’ve been coming into the contest following a rough, decisive, and bloody unanimous decision loss to David Benavidez back in March of 2023. Prior to that, the Tennessee native stopped two-time world titlist Anthony Dirrell with a Knockout of the Year shot in the ninth round of their bout. That big win came eleven months after he was stopped in eleven rounds by Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in the fourth defense of his IBF super middleweight title.
McCumby’s comeback, meanwhile, would’ve been of the more drastic, back-from-the-dead variety.
The 31-year-old McCumby was once considered a top prospect, but is now just three fights back into a career that was abandoned for five years. A native of Yorkville, Illinois, who now lives in Glendale, Arizona, he is best known for his one-round blowout of Donovan George in 2016, which was later changed to a no contest when it was revealed that he tested positive for two banned substances. After a lengthy suspension and an ACL injury that followed, the undefeated fighter simply put boxing aside until May, 2023.
Former two-belt super bantamweight world champ Stephen Fulton was set to appear on the August 17 undercard, competing for the first time since losing his WBO and WBC 122 lb. straps to pound-for-pound star Naoya Inoue via TKO in Japan thirteen months ago.
No makeup date has been announced for the postponed show.
Paul Magno has over forty years of experience in and around the sport of boxing and has had his hand in everything from officiating to training. As a writer, his work has appeared on Yahoo Sports, Fox Sports, Fight Hype, Max Boxing, Boxing.com, Inside Fights, The Queensberry Rules, Overtime Heroics, Bleacher Report, and Premier Boxing Champions. He is currently the owner and managing editor or The Boxing Tribune. You can follow his Twitter/X account, @boxing_tribune, for breaking boxing news, analysis, and sometimes NSFW commentary. For Advertising, Inquiries, etc., send him an email here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com