Photo by Rosie Cohe/Showtime
On Friday, September 8, 2017, Caleb Plant (16-0, 10 KOs) made his Showtime debut taking on late replacement, but battle tested, Andrew Hernandez (19-7-1, 9 KOs).
The fight served as the opening bout on a special edition tripleheader from the Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, NV.
Going into the bout, Hernandez said that his game plan would be to take Plant deep into the fight as he looked for the knockout.
“I’m very confident in myself and I hope I can take him into deep waters,” said Hernandez.
Unfortunately for Hernandez, the bout did go into the later rounds, but it only prolonged the sustained beating he took.
The first round got off to a slow start as both fighters looked to pick their shots carefully, but things quickly picked up as Plant upped the pace and focused on Hernandez’s body with hard punches.
Relying on his quickness and angles, Plant looked relaxed as he popped Hernandez with combination punches throughout the round.
Plant, who is a self-proclaimed student of the game and considers boxing his life, showed off a nice usage of his feints and shoulder rolls, tricks of the trade that Hernandez was simply not able to keep up with.
By the end of Round 2, Hernandez was sucking air as he looked to keep the fight at a slow pace.
In Round 3, Plant began to showboat a bit and land crisp combinations as Hernandez could only muster up limp jabs in return.
Hernandez began swelling and bruising on the left side of his face and it seemed like it was only a matter of time before Plant would close the show.
But, Plant was patient throughout the bout and although he could have made a bigger statement by finishing Hernandez, he never seemed to go for the knockout.
Halfway through the bout, the Showtime commentating team had Plant pitching a shutout and things didn’t fall off that course as the later rounds progressed.
Plant continued clocking Hernandez with hard right hands to the head and hooks to the body and landed at his highest connect percentage of the bout in Round 7.
In Round 8, Plant cracked Hernandez with a lightning quick right hand, a punch that did further damage to Hernandez’s closing left eye.
There was a long discussion in Hernandez’s corner going into Round 10 and it seemed that the referee and doctor where moments away from stopping the bout. But to his credit, Hernandez pleaded to continue and claimed that he was okay.
Although Hernandez’s toughness should be commended, he was in against a far superior fighter and didn’t win a round.
Officially, all three judges scored the bout 100-90 for Caleb Plant who now looks to face better competition in the 168-pound division.
