Shortly before Caleb Plant’s crunch clash with Trevor McCumby, Boxing News’ DECLAN TAYLOR caught up with the Tennessee talent…

WHEN Caleb Plant returns to the ring on Saturday night for his first fight in 18 months he will do so with a pressure he is yet to feel at any point across his decade-long professional boxing career.

The 32-year-old has not boxed since his fight of the year against David Benavidez in March of 2023, which he lost via unanimous decision, with the PBC network change one reason for his absence. 

But while he has been away from the ring, his young daughter Charly has grown from a baby to a child who is ringside in the gym, Plant says, for each and every one of his spars. And on Saturday she will attend an actual fight for the first time.

“She’s in the gym with me almost every day and every time I spar so there’s not too much added pressure but I’ve got to put on a show for her,” Plant says with a smile.

“This will be her first fight where she will be in the building. We have some little headphones for her for when it gets loud but this will be her first fight.”

The moment will be particularly meaningful for the Tennessee man, who has openly talked about the tragic loss of his first daughter Alia, who suffered with an unknown medical condition which Plant says caused 150 seizures a day. On January 29, 2015, aged just 19 months old, Alia died in her mother’s arms.

Plant was a 5-0, 3 KOs prospect at the time and in the nine years that have followed the tragedy, he has won world titles and emerged as one of American boxing’s leading lights. And, not one to leave home for training camp, Plant says two-year-old Charly is ever-present at his sessions.

“She’s running around the gym and when I’m sparring she’s shouting, ‘Go daddy! Good job daddy!’ or she’s walking around saying ‘Revenge tour’,” Plant adds. “It’s a lot of fun, I love it. There’s nothing better than being a dad.

“I’m not a fighter who has trouble sticking my hand in the cookie jar or anything like that. I like to be around my family, my wife isn’t a distraction and I don’t have distractions at home. Whether I’m in camp or not I’m here at the house and I get to spend time with my daughter. 

“I’m not handling all the responsibilities with her that I do outside of camp; [wife] Jordan is really stepping up and handling most if not all of that while I’m training but I still get to spend time with her throughout the day. I love being a dad, it’s fun. I have a great kid who is rarely whiney or crying. She’s a really cool kid who is always in a good mood which makes things easy.

“Every morning she’s telling me and my wife – ‘I want to go to the gym, I want to go to the gym’. I’ll leave and go to the gym and they will be shortly behind me. She comes to all my sparring sessions. She says ‘I want to go to the gym, daddy sparring, daddy boxing, usk usk!’

Sometimes when I’m sparring she will say: ‘Daddy hit guy, daddy hit guy’ so she knows what’s going on. She knows what’s up.”

Now she will get the chance to see her father in his real place of work for the first time but the undefeated Trevor McCumby is desperately hoping to make that moment a miserable one for the Plant family. The 31-year-old Glendale, Arizona native is 28-0, 21 KOs but has never boxed over 12 rounds or mixed with anyone of Plant’s calibre. As such, he is as wide as 9/1 with some oddsmakers. 

But favourite Plant, far from taking McCumby lightly, has felt ‘personally insulted’ by his opponent’s decision to even accept this fight in the first place. 

“My coach made a great point,” Plant starts. “If he was so confident in his ability, he wouldn’t have waited until 28-0 to step up. Most fighters step up before that, I stepped up with only 17 fights to fight for a world title as an underdog. Not many people are doing that but most people step up before 28-0. If he was confident, why would he wait until now?

“Then where I take it personal is of all the times to finally step up in competition, you think I’m the man for the job? You think you step up against me and handle business? That’s not going to happen. I do take that personally. I take it personally that he called me a quitter, too.

“He said, ‘Caleb’s a quitter, we’ve seen that before’ and that when the going gets tough in our fight I’ll find a way to quit. I do take offence to that because you could ask any boxing fan in the world and the last thing they will tell you is ‘Caleb’s a quitter’. I don’t know where the fuck he got that from but we are going to figure out on the 14th. We will see who quits then.”

Despite that insinuation from McCumby, the truth is that any questions regarding Plant’s heart were firmly answered in his last outing, when he hung on until the final bell despite taking a shellacking at times against Benavidez at the T-Mobile Arena in Vegas. It was the sort of fight that can change a fighter forever and typified the sort of bravery that boxing fans never forget. But 22-2 Plant, unsurprisingly, does not look back on that night positively.

“Even as an amateur,” he says. “One thing my dad always told me was that he never cared if I won the sportsman of the night and he never wanted me to win fight of the night. Me and David won ‘Fight of the Year’ but obviously you don’t want to be in too many of those because it means there was a lot of action and that it was a close fight. If it comes down to it, I’m willing to go out on my shield, I’ve proven that, but the goal is to go in there and win easy.

“The only fight I’m focused on or care about is the one in front of me. It’s one fight at a time, September 14, get the job handled. I know there’s a handful of big fights out there waiting on me and I’m willing to take them.”

David Benavidez and Caleb Plant

But first he must draw a line under the longest ring hiatus of his career. He insists, however, that he has not been growing old on the shelf and that Saturday night will be the culmination of the most successful training period of his life.

“There were times when it felt like the break was going slow but now looking back, like most things, it actually flew by,” he adds. “Time flies when you’re having fun.

“I’ve been extremely busy and after today’s sparring I’ve done 359 rounds since my last fight. Obviously, that’s staying extremely busy even if you haven’t seen me. I’m crazy sharp right now, I’m in crazy good shape and this is the best I’ve ever done in camp and the sharpest I’ve ever looked and the most complete fighter I’ve ever been. It comes from sparring as much as I have. But I’m almost in a spot where I haven’t left it all in the gym either so I’m feeling really good going into this fight, extremely confident and I’m excited.

“Of course, I enjoy training but I’m in this for the glory. A warrior is only alive for one reason and that’s to fight and he only fights to win. The training has been fun but I want to get in there, under those lights, and do what I love most.”

And for the first time, he will do that under the watchful eye of his youngest fan.