Caleb Plant: ‘If I ask someone to leave me alone, it’s not a request, it’s a demand’, P5
- Shidonna Raven
- Aug 6
- 3 min read
BY TRIS DIXON
This Article has been curated by UDBN
May 26, 2025
Source: Boxing Scene
OUT OF THE DARKNESS
Plant might have always felt it was inevitable, that he could make his dreams factual, but to outsiders it was always a long shot. While his father might have tried to set him up for success, you could name scores of fighters who tried young, dazzled for a while, and ultimately faded, their dreams and ambitions condemned to a weary nostalgia of what they hoped life would be like and not what it had actually become.
Plant was different. He could feel it.
“For some reason,” he confides, “in my heart, no matter what was going on in my life, I just always had this thing in my chest pulling me towards it saying, ‘No matter what, if you keep going, you’re going to make it.’ And a lot of times that feeling kept me up at night. Sometimes it’s exhausting. And I still had that feeling in my chest like, ‘just keep going, just keep going, just keep going.’ It’s been exhausting so many times because it keeps me up at night and it’s just ongoing. It never goes away. But I just always knew like, man, it’s going to work out.”
And with the adversity he has faced, it would have been easy for him to have been blown off course, to join the wastelands of failed contenders and pretenders who didn’t have the gumption to see it through when the going got too tough or the spotlight shone too brightly.
And despite the hard exterior, Plant shares that there have been vulnerable moments.
Despite being pushed in the face by a former champ, outnumbered by a boxing star and his goons, the bulletproof air Plant omits is in contrast to the considered man I’m in conversation with. He knows pain and he knows he can be hurt, but he also understands pain and loss and how those two horrible bedfellows have shaped what he has become.
In a glimpse into what life might have been like for Plant, in 2019, Plant’s mom pulled a knife on a cop and was shot and killed.
Four years before that, Plant had a daughter – Alia – who died in the winter of 2015 after an infection became pneumonia. She was just 19 months old. Alia had been born with a serious medical condition, suffered a heart-breaking decline and was on life-support four times. On the fifth occasion, with Alia at peace, Plant spoke to his baby, told her how proud he was of her and, at 10.55pm on January 29, the machines that were connected to the tubes and pumps that had been keeping her alive were turned off.
Plant has talked about those losses before, but there are other moments of anguish he won’t disclose.
“I mean, those are two experiences [his mom and daughter] that I’ve shared, but there’s a whole book of experiences that I haven't shared that are…” he pauses to think about his word selection. “You know, I’m sure a lot of other people go through things, but other experiences that may stop people from getting where they’re headed. But like I said, for some reason, I just always have this super strong feeling in my chest and my heart in my head that said, ‘Man, this is going to work. This is going to work.’ And I feel like those experiences, the ones I’ve shared and the ones that I haven’t, they prepared me. They’ve strengthened me. They’ve made me tough. They made me… what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And anytime I fell short outside of the ring or inside the ring, I never felt like, ‘Man, I’m a step further away.’ I always felt like, ‘Man, I’m a step closer now. I’m a step closer.’
Wanting a new start, Plant moved to Las Vegas to put the darkness behind him.
“And, yeah, I think those experiences definitely toughened me and made me the man that I am today and made me strong enough to have the attitude and the mindset and the fortitude that I have to, no matter what, man, you got to keep pressing on. You got to keep putting one foot in front of the other.” break
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