David Benavidez looked like he was ready for a straight jacked today with the way he was going off, looking as if he was about to physically attack a sheepish-looking former IBF super middleweight champion Caleb Plant in their first press conference in Los Angeles to discuss their headliner fight on Showtime PPV on March 25th at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
Plant (22-1, 13 KOs) got Benavidez (26-0, 23 KOs) riled up by reminding the media that he’d tested positive for cocaine in the past. Benavidez didn’t like that, and he jumped to his career and appeared ready to go after a physically shaken Plant.
The look on Plant’s face was similar to how shaken he was after Canelo Alvarez attacked him for his comments about him testing positive for a banned substance in their initial press conference in 2021.
Thankfully, Benavidez didn’t get near enough to Plant to let his hands go because he appeared ready to start throwing down right then and there.
What was disappointing is there wasn’t a face-off between them, which the organizers of the press conference opted not to let happen due to the risk of the two fighters coming to blows.
“Some of it seemed cringe. In the crowd, people were trying to figure out what he’s saying,” said Caleb Plant to Fighthype about Benavidez. “He’s got a lot to say, that’s cool, but talking don’t get it done. Fighting gets it done.
“Again, this is his personal fight. This isn’t my personal fight. I’ve been here before. I’ve been on the big stage more than once, whether it was Jose [Uzcategui], whether it was Canelo. I’m going to go in there and do it again.
“I’ve let everyone know, but I’m not with all the yelling and rah-rah. I’m going to show people. So on March 25th, tune in to Showtime pay-per-view, and you’ll be able to see for yourself.
“His photographer pushes ours. It’s just a lot of tough guy, rah-rah stuff. Even this morning as soon as we got here, they were waiting in the lobby. As soon as we pulled up, they wanted to come up to the car.
“All these security guards and all these cameras. This is a controlled environment. It’s easy to act tough when it’s a controlled environment. All these big mother f***kers standing around, waiting for some s**t to pop off so they can jump in between it.
“So it’s easy to run around when you’ve got 15 security guards standing around,” said Plant.