Caleb Plant is not shy about opening up when it comes to his thoughts on upcoming opponent David Benavidez or, even, Benavidez’s father and trainer Jose Benavidez Sr. With just about three weeks to go before the highly-anticipated bad blood super middleweight clash, Plant once again let loose with his contempt for all things Benavidez.
“I don’t know what his deal is, but I think he’s nervous, and he feels he’s got a real fight on his hands. He’s never had a fight like this before, and he better come right,” Plant told ABN Sports Media, referring to David Benavidez.
“He’s supposed to say he’s going to knock me out. The only thing is, he should be able to say that. He shouldn’t have to read from his phone to say that. So I don’t know if his daddy wrote a speech for him or what.
“All the things he’s saying and all the things he’s doing, it’s either for the cameras, or his daddy told him to say that because that’s who runs the show over there. His daddy runs the show.
“His dad tells him what to say, his dad tells him when to be quiet, his dad tells him what to do. His dad tells him what to do over here. On my team, I’m running the show. Again, he sounded real nervous up there just stuttering a bunch, but come fight night, he had better not be stuttering.
“It wasn’t a surprise to me [that Jose Sr. did most of the talking in the kickoff press conference for the March 24 show. His dad is the one that does all the interviews…His dad is in interviews more than you see David.
“I’m not sure if anyone is keeping up with this, but his dad tags me in every post. So I would consistently keep going to his page because he keeps tagging me.
“As I kept going, every time I would go to his page, his followers would go like 10 or 15,000 every time I would go to his page. His dad isn’t doing anything significant enough in his life to get all of those overnight, and I noticed he’s buying followers.
“I don’t know which man his age or his position in life would care about followers. He has more followers than David. David has like 311, and he has 330,000. What is he doing in his life that is significant enough to keep getting all those followers?
“I think he has ‘little man’ syndrome. He wants to be in the spotlight so bad. That’s why he talks for David. That’s why he’s all up in the interviews. That’s why even at the press conferences, he’s talking for him. That’s why he’s buying followers like a little kid because he wants to be the man so bad.
“He’s trying to live through his son. He’s trying to talk for his son. My dad don’t talk for me. My dad don’t talk for me or buy Instagram followers.”
That’s certainly a lot of talk to back up in the ring later on. There’s also some truth to Plant’s blasts, especially the part about the elder Benavidez’s very prominent and seemingly non-stop talking ahead of his son’s big pay-per-view bout– the first pay-per-view headlining spot in the biggest fight of his career so far.
The father-son/trainer-father dynamic has always been a touchy one in boxing. Sometimes, it works beautifully, as it seemingly does in the case of Devin Haney and Bill Haney. There also many cases where the relationship becomes toxic and distracts from a fighter’s ring performances.
Caleb Plant isn’t going too deep into all of that, though. He’s just poking at the bear (Benavidez) and trying to get in his head. We’ll see how that works out.
