Boxing Odds and Ends: Caleb Plant, a Romanian Heavyweight and More

IBF super middleweight champion Caleb Plant can’t win for losing. In his most recent bout, Plant pitched a shutout over Caleb Truax, winning all 12 rounds on every scorecard – the cards of the judges, the announcing crew, and presumably everyone watching at home. And yet a writer for a rival web site characterized his performance as mediocre.

What wasn’t mediocre were the ratings. The battle of the Calebs reportedly drew a peak audience of 2.019 million on FOX, all the more impressive considering that the fight went head-to-head with an NBA game between the Lakers and Celtics on ABC.

Caleb Plant is different, from his roots in a small Tennessee town to other factors that need no elaboration. He has a compelling backstory and an attractive wife in the former Jordan Hardy, a PBC on FOX sports journalist. And, of course, he can fight more than a little. But fighters with the potential to become big draws tend to be well-protected and Caleb Plant (21-0, 12 KOs)  has been no exception.

Since winning the title with a hard-fought and well-earned decision over Jose Uzcategui, Plant has been thrust against Mike Lee, Vincent Feigenbutz, and Truax – hardly a murderers row. Lee, the Notre Dame alum, was way out of his element and Caleb Truax, the 2017 Cinderella man, was 37 years old and looked his age. “His resume is really, really poor, really poor,” said British promoter Eddie Hearn when asked his thoughts about a fight between Plant and Canelo Alvarez, the man Plant is chasing.

Plant vs. Canelo was reportedly almost a done deal until Hearn interceded and swerved Canelo toward Callum Smith. Plant vs. Canelo may yet come about later this year and, if so, it will be a blockbuster because Canelo won’t be the only one selling tickets.

It would be wise of Team Plant to catch Canelo sooner, rather than later. As Satchel Paige famously said, don’t look back because someone may be gaining on you.

The 168-pound division has two fast-rising talents in Edgar Berlanga and David Morrell. Either would be favored to defeat Caleb Plant if the fight were held tomorrow.

Berlanga, of course, is the New York-based Puerto Rican who is the 2020/21 version of the young Mike Tyson, albeit in a smaller package. None of his 16 opponents has lasted into the second round. “It might be a year or 18 months away,” tweeted Top Rank matchmaker Bruce Trampler, “but I can see Edgar Berlanga hitting Caleb Plant on the chin and knocking him dead.”

Morrell, the Cuban southpaw, currently fighting out of Minneapolis, has attracted far less buzz; he’s had only four pro fights. But Morrell, a PBC fighter, already holds an interim belt which he earned with a wide 12-round decision over Lennox Allen. True, this is a WBA belt, raw sewage in the words of prominent boxing scribe Dan Rafael, but Allen was undefeated going in and Morrell’s other wins have come via stoppage. His punches aren’t as debilitating as those of Berlanga, but he may be the more skilled of the two.

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Speaking of the WBA, we did a double-take when we checked the latest heavyweight rankings and saw Bogdan Dinu ranked #3, a notch below Oleksandr Usyk and a notch above Deontay Wilder.

Dinu has fought two fighters with recognizable names: Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller and Kubrat Pulev. Miller stopped him in the fifth round, Pulev in the seventh.

Dinu has fought twice since the setback to Pulev, both in his native Romania. His opponents were an obscure 41-year-old South African, Osborn Machimama, and an obscure 36-year-old German, Frank Bluemle. Machimama, who stands six-foot-three-and-a-half, weighed 323 ½ pounds. Bluemle is a blown-up cruiserweight.

Back in the days when The Ring magazine ratings were the only ratings that mattered, it was widely rumored that a boxer’s placement in the Top 10 was negotiable, if you get our drift. Nonetheless, we suspect that Nat Fleischer would roll over in his grave at the thought of Bogdan Dinu sitting at #3 on a list of the top heavyweight contenders.

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With each passing day, it seems more certain that the 2020 Summer Olympics, pushed back to 2021 and slated to begin on July 23, are down for the count, a big blow to the Tokyo organizers who stand to lose billions of dollars. Orlando, Florida, is volunteering to fill the breach, but that’s a longshot. The coronavirus numbers are trending down in Orlando as in many other sections of the country (hooray!) and the metropolitan area – which includes Tampa and St. Petersburg – certainly has the infrastructure to host an Olympiad, but an event of this magnitude requires years rather than months of planning.

If the games are salvaged, how will the U.S. boxing team fare? Well, let’s put it this way: If a bookmaker posts a proposition on whether at least one U.S. boxer will leave with a gold medal, the clear-cut favorite would be “no.”

This says less about the quality of the team than about the fact that a would-be Olympic boxer has to scale more hurdles nowadays with the result that few nations are expected to have an entrant in every weight class. But it’s also true that many of the most promising prospects have left Team USA for the pro ranks, a development that began before the pandemic. The list includes two fighters who finished first in their weight class at the most recent Olympic Trials tournament, Javier Martinez and Keyshawn Davis.

Martinez, a 25-year-old Milwaukee southpaw, won the 165-pound competition at the Trials. He’s 2-0 as a pro with both wins coming on Top Rank cards inside the MGM Bubble. Davis, who topped the field at 138 pounds, was considered the boxer with the best chance of winning gold in Tokyo. He signed with Matchroom a few days ago and will make his pro debut on the Canelo-Yildirim card in Miami on Feb. 27.

Keyshawn Davis did not leave Team USA of his own volition. He was booted off the team last month for “violating procedures,” the exact nature of which wasn’t specified but may have had something to do with taking sponsorship money from an apparel company.

Davis enters the pro ranks with a ready-made catchphrase: “I am who they waiting for.” The hoodie with these words displayed on it sells for $48.99, the tee shirt a mere $24.99.

Photo credit: Sean Michael Ham / TGB Promotions

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