Caleb ‘Sweethands’ Plant will be fighting 37-year-old former two-time WBC super-middleweight champion Anthony Dirrell next instead of the dangerous #1 contender David Benavidez.
Dirrell has looked bad in recent fights against Benavidez and Avni Yildirim, looking over the hill and nowhere near the fighter, he’d been 10+ years ago. Benavidez beat the stuffing out of Dirrell in 2019 in a fight that was difficult to watch due to the one-sided nature of the contest.
PBC hasn’t given up on Dirrell despite him being faded, though, so you got to give them credit for sticking with the old ex-champion.
Jake Donovan and Michael Benson are reporting the news of Plant (21-1, 12 KOs) opting to take on the past his best Dirrell rather than going straight into a fight with Benavidez (25-0, 22 KOs).
The plan is for Plant to fight Dirrell and whoever emerges as the victor in that clash will battle the May 21st winner between Benavidez and David Lemieux.
That’s the idea right now, but it’s highly unlikely that Plant will take the fight with Benavidez later this year if they both win their preliminary fights. I mean, we can always hope that Plant, 29, will agree to face Benavidez, but don’t count on it happening.
Given Plant’s lack of interest in fighting Benavidez all these years, the chances of him facing him now are slim.
Don’t count out Dirrell in the Plant fight because he can punch, and as we’ve seen from the Tennessee native, he’s weak in the chin department late in his fights.
It seems like a waste of the fan’s time to see these two pointless fights [Benavidez-Lemieux & Plant-Dirrell] take place first rather than Benavidez and Plant going it right away, but this is boxing.
It’s a weak move on Plant’s part to fight the faded Dirrell (34-2-2, 25 KOs), but not altogether surprising from him because he’d never fought an elite-level fighter during his career before his recent unification match against Canelo Alvarez last November.
As bad as Plant looked against Canelo, Tim Compton isn’t ruling out a victory for the badly washed Dirrell. Look at it this way.
Plant showed NO punching power against Canelo, and like in some of his previous fights, he gassed out in the championship rounds. If Plant gasses against Dirrell, he’ll get stopped for sure.
Many boxing fans got their hopes up last weekend with Plant and Benavidez trading trash talk on social media. With the way that Plant was talking mess to Benavidez, he made it look like he wanted the fight.
On Sunday, however, Plant made it clear that he had no intention of fighting Benavidez, pointing out that he’s already scheduled to face David Lemieux on May 21st.
That fight is seen as an easy win for Benavidez, though, as Lemieux, a flawed fighter from the jump, has been in freefall with his career fading since his consecutive defeats against Marco Antonio Rubio and Joachim Alcine in 2011.
The ONLY reason Benavidez is facing the 33-year-old Lemieux at this point in his career is that the World Boxing Council sanctioned the fight as a WBC 168-lb title eliminator to determine the mandatory for champion Canelo Alvarez.
Ring Magazine super-middleweight rankings:
Champion: Canelo Alvarez
1. David Benavidez
2. Caleb Plant
3. Billy Joe Saunders
4. Anthony Dirrell
5. John Ryder
6. David Lemieux
