Boxing Odds and Ends: Notes on Canelo-Plant, Probellum, and Adrien Broner

Boxing Odds and Ends: Notes on Canelo-Plant, Probellum, and Adrien Broner

On Nov. 6, Canelo Alvarez, boxing biggest attraction, opposes Caleb Plant at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. The winner will become the first undisputed super middleweight champion in the four-belt era.

It’s a fair guess that the fight is already a sellout. By this, I mean that it appears that the scalpers are holding all the remaining tickets. Stub Hub, the leader in the industry, has tickets available at prices ranging from $938 to $25,000.

An alternative to fans who won’t cough up the heavy tariff but want to be close to the action is to attend the closed-circuit viewing at the Park MGM Theater. Tickets at this venue went on sale today at a flat rate of $125. The 5,200-seat theater sits across the street from the MGM Grand steps away from T-Mobile Arena.

The fight will air on Showtime pay-per-view at a price that hasn’t yet been announced. While the undefeated Plant (21-0, 12 KOs) isn’t lacking for confidence, the linemakers don’t like his chances. Canelo is a consensus 10/1 favorite with the buy-back on the underdog available at +650.

In Alvarez (56-1-2, 38 KOs), Plant is meeting a 16-year-pro who is still only 31 years old and shows no signs of slowing down. The Guadalajara redhead has defeated a profusion of world class opponents, five of whom – Austin Trout, Liam Smith, Gennadiy Golovkin, Callum Smith, and Billy Joe Saunders – were undefeated when he fought them. Plant, by contrast, has been matched very carefully since upending Jose Uzcategui to win the IBF belt. He was thrust against Mike Lee (TKO 3), Vincent Feigenbutz (TKO 10), and Caleb Truax (UD 12)– hardly a murderers’ row.

Probellum

Probellum, the new company founded by former Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer, is on quite a shopping binge. Among its latest signees are Nonito Donaire and Darius Fulgham.

Donaire, who turns 39 next month, is a shoo-in for the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Born in the same town in the Philippines as Manny Pacquiao, he has held world titles in four weight classes. In his last outing, in May of this year, he began a second reign as a world bantamweight champion with a fourth-round stoppage of favored Nordine Oubaali of France.

Schaefer and Donaire are well-acquainted. Donaire participated in the 2019 World Boxing Super Series bantamweight tournament, a Richard Schaefer brainchild. He advanced to the finals where he lost a narrow decision to Naoya Inoue in Saitama, Japan. The bout was a doozy. TSS and other publications named it the Fight of the Year.

Donaire has been pursuing a rematch and believes that Schaefer can make it happen.

Darius Fulgham joins Schaefer’s firm straight from the amateur ranks, a first for Probellum. At the 2020 U.S. Olympic trials, held in December of 2019 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Fulgham won the 201-pound competition as the 8-seed. He did not get to the Olympics, which were pushed back a year, failing to overcome other hurdles.

Fulgham, 25, hails from tiny Rosharon, Texas, and trains in Houston. He graduated from Prairie View A & M last year with a degree in nursing.

Probellum previously announced the signings of Regis Prograis, Badou Jack, Eimantas Stanionis, Eduardo Hernandez, Ricky Burns, and Brandon Moore, the latter a six-foot-six, 230-pound heavyweight from Florida who has been fighting off the grid in places like Monterrey, Mexico, building his record to 10-0 (6). According to a company press release, Probellum has co-promotional agreements in place with promoters in Germany, Spain, Latvia, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Ghana, and the Dominican Republic.

Adrien Broner

Boxing’s preeminent knucklehead Adrien Broner has found himself in trouble again. Broner, 32, was arrested late Sunday night in Covington, Kentucky, on a fugitive warrant related to a June 2018 incident at a Cleveland nightclub where he pinned a 35-year-old woman he did not know to a couch and forcibly kissed her. According to the woman’s lawyer, she suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome as a result of the assault and spent a year in intensive therapy.

Broner was charged with gross sexual imposition. In court, the fighter did not contest the charge against him. Judge Nancy Margaret Russo ordered him to pay the woman an amount that with attorneys’ fees totaled almost $830,000 and she also put him on probation for two years.

Broner violated the terms of his probation when he was arrested in Miami in March of 2020 on a drunken-driving charge. In August he was ordered to serve seven days in jail and to begin a treatment program upon his release. His failure to begin the program purportedly sparked the warrant for his arrest. By all accounts, the financial judgment against him ordered by Judge Russo remains unpaid.

A father of five (according to Wikipedia), Broner has repeatedly been in trouble with the authorities in his hometown of Cincinnati and elsewhere. He last fought in February of this year, winning a 12-round unanimous decision over unheralded Jovanie Santiago on a PBC show at the Mogehan Sun Casino in Connecticut. His record currently stands at 34-4-1 (24).

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