Caleb Plant: ‘If I ask someone to leave me alone, it’s not a request, it’s a demand’, P3

Shidonna Raven
3 hours ago
4 min read

This Article has been curated by UDBN

May 26, 2025

THE SANCTUARY

Some 20 years ago, Richie Plant built a gym at the family home in Nashville, and Plant made that his nursery, but even before then Caleb had the taste for action by going to a boxing gym in the Rivergate area – a place off most Nashville tourist maps.

It was home to a cruiserweight fighter, Loren Ross – “Ross the Boss” – who had been on the army boxing team years earlier, and Plant would watch him shadow box, hit the bags and spar.

“And man, he was super smooth,” Plant smiles at the memory. “He had a great boxing IQ and was just really smart. And he’s the one who really like planted the seed of my dad’s brain too, because my dad was a fighter as well, but his defense wasn’t really… you know… all that. And my dad wanted me to have good defense. And when he took me to Loren Ross and the things that Loren first started showing me… how to box, how to move, my dad kind of took that and ran with it.”

Plant’s dad had been an amateur kickboxer, but things were not so straightforward with his mom.

The Plant family lived in a two-bed trailer in Ashland City on the Nashville outskirts and times were tough. The family were so poor, Plant – as a baby – slept in a dresser drawer rather than a crib.

His mom battled alcoholism and addiction and Caleb recalls frequent sounds of “yelling and breaking” in his childhood. While he concedes his mother was his No. 1 fan, he never wanted to be in a position where he had to clean up after her after she got high. In fact, the difficulties at home led Plant to move in with his grandparents, and his grandpop was a cowboy. Young Plant found a love of hunting, fishing, shooting, and riding horses, and enjoyed the quieter environs – away from the trauma of home.But when his dad really started focusing on working with Caleb, things changed rapidly.

The Plant household developed its own facility – “a small rinky-dink gym” – and Plant would be out of school by 2.45pm, in the gym at 3.15pm, and he’d stay until 10.30pm. Six days a week.

At first, the floor was tiled and “the ring” was marked only by tape. The boxers would stand around the square holding hands to fill in for ropes and the kids would fight.

That was his routine, from the age of nine until Plant left school.

It was practice, it was repetition, it was life.

“But that was my sanctuary,” Plant admits. “That was my safe place, you know, not liking my home scenario very much. It was pretty chaotic and just feeling like a nobody really. Then, because of how much time I spent in the gym, it’s like I surpassed my peers pretty quickly. And now all of a sudden, I’m this kid in the gym who even like grown adults, grown folks are looking up to like, ‘Man, I want to be like him.’ ‘Man, I wish I could do this. I wish I could do that. Like him.’

“And now it’s like, all of a sudden I’m somebody and I’m somebody people want to be like, and then I leave the gym and I go back to being like somebody that nobody wants to be.”

It was never a pleasant transition. Life as society’s Clark Kent was far less fun, exciting, and rewarding. It was not like Plant was drunk on power from the gym, but he knew it gave him a self-worth that he had been unable to find outside of the ropes.

As a civilian, he was lost. It took going back to the gym to feel good about himself.

“And it just became this addictive drug for me where it’s the only thing I wanted to do and it is the only thing I thought about. And it’s the only place I wanted to be,” he continues.

“And it’s like, in the real world, you can’t always control what goes on. But in that boxing gym and that boxing ring, I have a lot of control. I have a lot of say with what can happen, what can go on… I can dictate a lot of things.

“And I just fell in love with that.”

He played little league football too, and was good, but he liked fighting more. He’d started football at seven, but before his freshman year his dad urged him to make a choice.

With school about to start, Richie said to Caleb: “’Hey buddy, you need to pick one. I know you’ve been playing football a long time. I know you love it.

“I know you’ve been fighting a long time. But you know, high school ball is going to be very demanding.

“Obviously fighting is very demanding too. So you can’t be great at everything. You need to pick one.’”

Caleb admits school was not for him. He didn’t like it and wasn’t good at it.

“I come from a small town,” he says. “There weren’t like a lot of big recruits [for football]. And I was like, ‘Man, I just want to box. I just want to fight.’”

At what point did Plant realize boxing was his ticket to a better life?

“Nine years old, nine years old,” he sighs. “That’s why I want to be a world champion.

“All I want to do is fight.”

We Got that FAN-Appeal | Undisputed Boxing News

Shidonna Raven, Creative Director

Marcus Doggett, Chief Editor