Caleb Plant’s trainer Stephen “Breadman” Edwards says he wasn’t surprised by his man’s one-punch knockout of Anthony Dirrell last October, but he doesn’t want to focus on it in the final days before his man’s super-middleweight clash with David Benavidez.
Plant (22-1, 13 KOs) isn’t known as a knockout puncher, but he flattened Dirrell with a picture-perfect left hook in the ninth round at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. It was Plant’s first outing since losing to Canelo Alvarez in November 2021 and his first time working with Edwards.
“I did know he had it in him. The first time I held some pads for him, I could feel that he had power,” Edwards explained on a recent edition of the Showtime Boxing podcast.
“But you know what?’ he continued. “I really don’t want to keep talking about his power because that’s just one fight and sometimes subconsciously you fall in love with things. He did it, and we move on, and I don’t want to keep bringing it up because he’s a boxer and I want him to stay that way. It’s done and over with now. It was a great win, but personally I just want to move forward. I know that the promotion is riding the coat tails of a spectacular knockout, because that’s what good promotions do. But it’s just one night.”
As he prepares Plant for their second fight together, Edwards says that there is more to his charge than the famously intense personality experienced by most fans and media.
“Everybody has different layers to their personality.” he explained. “Like anybody else, some days he comes in in a bad mood, some days he comes in serious, not every day’s going to be peaches and cream. I get along with him, you know what I mean, but I get along with him from my perspective, which is a trainer. I see him for two hours a day, I see some things, I tell him what he needs to do, he may give me some feedback and I may go about my business, and he goes home with his family. I see that a lot of fighters in his weight division don’t like him, but I like him because I don’t have to fight him. But sometimes he’s a funny guy, tries to crack jokes in camp. He's a pretty cool, laid back guy. I think he takes boxing very seriously, but he has a light side.”
