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Highly-regarded trainer Stephen “Breadman” Edwards is excited by the potential in his blossoming relationship with super middleweight contender Caleb Plant.
Plant has become a cult hero in recent years, as much for his defiance outside the ropes as inside them, and there is more to come from the 32-year-old who was born in Nashville but makes his home in Las Vegas.
“Sweet Hands” is 22-2 (13 KOs) and preparing for an August 17 return against Trevor McCumby. His last four fights have been against Caleb Truax, Canelo Alvarez, Andre Dirrell and David Benavidez, going 2-2 but cementing his status as a leading 168-pounder.
It was in the summer of 2022 when Philadelphian “Breadman” and Plant hooked up, as the fighter headed into the Dirrell bout that October, and Edwards instantly started creating new habits in the already world-class pro, and they have led to Edwards believing there is more to come from his charge.
“There’s definitely some meat left on the bone,” Edwards said of his fighter. “I actually think he’s going to show some new wrinkles to his game when he fights on August 17 and I think that he’s improved from the time that I first started working with him. There were some things that he just didn’t do, as far as just boxing and growing up in a different city under different circumstances, there were things he just didn’t know and didn’t do, and he’s improved a lot.
“He didn’t spar in between fights really before I trained him, and I told him, ‘When you’re on a schedule of one fight a year, one fight every six months, you can’t not spar. I know you think you’re getting wear and tear on your body, but the rust is going to be too hard to overcome.’
“So when I first trained him for the Dirrell fight, he hadn’t sparred in over a year or close to it. He was just rusty. That’s the only word I could use to describe him. Really, really rusty.”
Edwards said Plant struggled through the opening weeks of camp because his timing and distance had not been there, but Plant is now starting off sharp and in shape.
“Listen, I don’t believe in not sparring between camps,” Edwards added. “I think you gotta spar to stay sharp. Especially when you’re fighting once a year, so we overcame that. For this camp, he’s been sparring two, three times a week so when I got out here [to Las Vegas where they are preparing] he was sharp already, so that alone will keep you sharp.
“I watch a kid like Boots Ennis, he’s in the gym sparring kids, not hitting them hard but just working hard every day. He don’t fight often, but he’s always sharp because he’s always in the gym. Just something as simple as that, where people may take it for granted, he just wasn’t sparring in between fights. Boxing is a game of skill, and skill gets cultivated with repetition and if you’re not sparring, how do you think you’re going to be sharp? You’re just sparring eight weeks after being off a year and you’re going to be sharp? It’s not gonna work that way.”
While rust and ring activity might have been a problem, weight is not an issue for the fighter who has boxed in and around 168 since turning pro in 2014. He weighed around 160lbs for some of his early fights, but Edwards doesn’t see Plant moving up anytime soon, if at all.
“I actually think that he’s a natural ‘tweener’. I think if there was a weight division at 164 or 165 I think that would be ideal for him,” Edwards added. “I can’t see him moving up unless it’s a big money fight, because he doesn’t have any issues making 168-pounds. Sometimes after our workouts, he’ll lose like six or seven pounds and he will already be down in the 170s, weighing 178-179 just from a hard workout. He sweats a lot. He’s not a small super middleweight, but he’s definitely not a guy who struggles to make weight, walks around at 220-pounds and has to come down. That’s not an issue for him, so I can see him staying at 168 for the rest of his career.
“There’s some big fights [at 168] and he’s not shying away from any big fights, so I expect him to be in some big fights over the next year, two years.”
McCumby, 28-0 (21 KOs), will come first, possibly in Florida on the first free-to-air show on Amazon Prime.
“You can only fight one fight at a time,” Edwards went on. “We’ve got to get through this guy. He’s undefeated, at one time he was a highly-sought after prospect, so this is his big moment and I expect him to really try and perform against Caleb.
“It’s very exciting. Just seeing him these first three weeks in camp, he’s improved, he’s gotten better. He’s got at least 5-10 per cent better, so he’s improved. He’s done exactly what I told him to do in between fights and that is, you don’t have to go crazy, but spar four to six rounds, it doesn’t have to be killer sparring, and work on the things we’re working on every single day, maybe for an hour. It doesn’t have to be that long, maybe just work on one thing and do it over and over again, and I could tell the first week he’d been doing it, because he’s sharp, he’s in good shape and the world is going to see some of those new wrinkles.
“Certain things you can’t rush, and development is something you can’t rush, you just have to keep doing it over and over and one day it will show up in the fight. And Caleb only has 24 fights. Even though he’s been around 10 years, there’s still some level of improvement with him and I feel like you’ll see that come August 17.”
Plant, of course, has gone viral since his last fight, a decision loss to Benavidez, in March 2023. He slapped Jermall Charlo backstage at Crawford-Spence last summer having been antagonized, and there was an altercation with Ryan Garcia and his crew following the Gervonta Davis-Frank Martin bout in June.
The ranks of ‘Team Plant’ supporters and followers blew up after both.
“He was probably popular before that,” stated Edwards. “He’s not a Gervonta Davis-level star, but he’s definitely the level of star up under that. You’ve got guys like Tank, Anthony Joshua, Canelo, they’re the faces of boxing, but Caleb is the next level under that so he’s definitely a popular guy.
“I don’t get into too much of that stuff [the out of the ring drama]. I think it gets a little overblown, but he’s definitely a man of principles, and he felt disrespected, so he did what he thought he should have did. He’s definitely a man of principles.”