Caleb ‘Sweethands’ Plant’s trainer, Stephen Edwards, believes there’s a possibility that he could stop Jermall Charlo if the two fight next.
Jermall is the better puncher of the two, but the former IBF suer middleweight champion Plant would have a chance of knocking him out based on being active.
Plant, 31, is needy right now after two out of his last three fights, and fight with Jermall would be a good opportunity for him to try turn his troubled career around,
Jermall (33-0, 22 KOs) needs an opponent after making his successful comeback last Saturday night, defeating Jose Benavidez Jr. by a ten round unanimous decision on Showtime in Las Vegas.
Charlo wants to even the score with the former IBF super middleweight champion Plant (22-2, 14 KOs) after he was slapped without warning during an altercation.
Plant, who has lost two of his last three fights, showed up at ringside for Jermall’s fight last weekend, making it obvious that he was hoping to start the wheels rolling to set up a clash between them.
Factors affecting a Jermall vs. Plant fight from happening:
- PBC finding a new network to replace Showtime: Charlo & Plant won’t be fighting if PBC is unable to find a replacement for Showtime, and they could end up sitting inactive for a long duration if the search takes time.
- Negotiations: Jermall is in a stronger position to get the better deal in talks for a fight with the struggling Plant. If Plant makes negotiations difficult, the fight won’t happen.
- Other big-money options for Jermall: Canelo Alvarez could potentially select Jermall Charlo as his opponent for next May or September, and if that happens, Plant will be out in the cold.
Plant’s trainer believes he can stop Jermall
“Let me tell you a secret. Any guy can be stopped. You’ll never hear me say a guy can’t be stopped. If you get hit with the right combination, and somebody places the right shots, you can go,” said Stephen Edwards to Fighthype when asked if his fighter Caleb ‘Sweethands’ Plant could knockout Jermall Charlo.
“Sure, he [Plant] could stop him, but he could stop Caleb too. That’s what you train for. If you get hit with a shot that you don’t see, you can be stopped. So, I could see him stopping Jermall.”
Edwards is going a little overboard with his hypothetical on Plant stopping Jermall Charlo, as that’s dream stuff. If anything is getting knocked out in a fight between them, it’s Plant. It’s already been established that he’s a little chinny, getting knocked out by Canelo Alvarez, hurt by Jose Uzcategui and David Benavidez.
“Jermall has a great chin. He’s one of those guys that has an underrated chin,” said Stephen. “He never gets knocked down, he never gets visibly hurt if you look at his career real good. He gets hit.
“He’s not like a defensive specialist. He does get hit. So, he showed a solid chin throughout the years, but a chin isn’t something that you want to brag about. It’s good until it’s not anymore.
“So, definitely, he [Jermall] can get stopped. Those are big guys. In real life, if they weren’t boxers, they would be 200 lb free safeties in the NFL. 6’0, 200 lbs. So anybody that big can hit you and hurt you.
“Jermall looked pretty good. I kind of expected it to go the distance,” said Edwards about Charlo’s fight against Jose Benavdiez Jr. last Saturday night. “You could see how he was finding himself as the fight went on.
“He looked pretty good. I give him a seven or an eight, considering was off two and a half years. Jose Benavidez was in good shape. He was throwing a lot of punches. So you could tell that he really came to win the fight,” said Edwards.
Charlo looked good against Benavidez Jr.
“You could see Jermall shaking off the rust as the fight was going on,” said Stephen. “He did a good job. That was a solid performance. Even though he was supposed to win the fight, and that was a big favorite, you could tell that Benavidez was in good shape. So, he [Jermall] was fighting a live guy, considering everything that was surrounding it.”
Jose Benavidez Jr. did a lot of work in camp, sparring his brother David Benavidez, and that obviously helped him in his fight with Jermall. Without all the work that he’d done, Benavidez Jr. would have been crushed by Jermall.
Still, the fight was mostly one-sided, with Jermall landing the harder shots, and boxing Benavidez’s ears off without getting out of first gear. It was like watching Dmitry Bivol coast in his fight with Canelo Alvarez.
Jermall was calm and looked like he wasn’t interested in putting his foot on the gas pedal to take Benavidez Jr. out. Why would he? It was a tune-up, and Jermall needed rounds to get the ring rust off.
If he’d for the kills instead of playing with his food, it would have been a self-defeating move.
“I seen a lot of Roy Jones’ imprints on it. He [Jermall] was throwing a lot of good left hooks,” said Edwards about Charlo. “It was a good fight. He did good. No, I was not. I told some of my players in the boxing community not to bet on Jermall winning by knockout in his first fight back.
“A knockout isn’t just power; it’s timing, and when you haven’t been fighting, sometimes you don’t have the timing to catch people with shots. Him not making weight. There’s no excuses for that because he already had the advantages going into the fight.”
The way that Charlo was fighting, he could have gotten the knockout of Jose Sr. if he’d went for it, but he looked like he was mostly reacting to the pace that his small opponent was setting.
If this were Caleb Plant inside the ring, Jermall likely would have jumped him early and went for the throat right off the bat. There wouldn’t have been much that the struggling Plant could have done other than try and survive.
“Fighting Jose at 163 lbs, and then coming in three or four pounds heavier. There’s no excuse for that,” said Edward. “That kind of sucks, but boxing needs a union or insurance company or whatever.
“People say three pounds is not that much, but when you’re cutting weight, and that’s all you can cut, and then somebody wants three more pounds off of you, it can be draining. So, Jermall had a lot of the advantages in terms of that, but I was just talking in terms of the fight,” said Edwards.
The weight wasn’t that much of a big deal for the fight, as that’s not the reason Benavidez Jr. lost. He could have been heavier than Jermall, and the outcome would have been the same.
“Listen, one day someone is going to pull the weight thing, and the other person is going to say, ‘You know what? I’m not fighting.’ That’s what’s going to happen,” said Edwards.
Benavidez Jr. wasn’t about to pull out of the fight with Jermall over his missing weight, as then he wouldn’t have been paid. If Benavidez Jr. were a wealthy millionaire swimming in dough, he might have pulled out over the weight, but that’s not the situation.
Also, if he had pulled out over the weight, it might have made him look like someone who can’t be trusted to stick it out like a trooper. It would make him look like a chicken if he’d pulled out, and that would have been a stupid career move.
“It’s going to ruin the show, and everyone is going to blame the guy that made weight and did the professional thing. It’s the other guy’s fault. You don’t have to accept the fight. Three pounds is a lot, especially when your guy is already the smaller guy,” said Edwards about Jermall coming in heavy.
