Following yesterday’s final press conference for Saturday night’s undisputed super middleweight title unification between Canelo Alvarez and Caleb Plant, Plant’s trainer Justin Gamber fielded some media questions about their preparations for the bout and why he’s expecting a big performance from his fighter.
Gamber on Andre Ward working with their camp to prepare for this bout
“Caleb told me that Andre reached out to him and offered for Caleb to come there for a few days, just train with him. And Caleb and him are friends and obviously their styles aren’t so different and Andre’s a smart guy, and Virgil’s a smart guy, and I encouraged him to go there and spend a few days with him. It’s not like they’re going to be on the team as coaches or anything like that, they’re friends with our team and we’re friends with them and I encouraged it. We’ve got a couple of small points that we’ve saved, that are apart of the game plan, but at the end of the day they’re just trying to help us out a little bit and that’s all it was.”
On if Plant was advised to physically impose himself on Canelo
“No, he didn’t say that. And he didn’t say we need to do anything, he gave us some pointers and some things to think about, and we know that we need to mix it up. Caleb’s a natural boxer, part of that though is being aggressive at the right moments while you’re boxing and we know that we’re gonna have to mix it up. We’re not gonna just be able to use our legs the whole time — we didn’t need anybody to tell us that. But the work that he did do with Andre was significant and we appreciated it.
“We cannot do anything one way. Like I was saying (on stage), when you fight the pound-for-pound best you have your hands full regardless, whether it’s Lomachenko, Terence Crawford. When you fight one of these guys, they’re legit. You better be ready, and we are ready, but we know that we have to do different things with our strategy and our fighting ability to come out on top in this fight. He can’t fight one way, it’s too predictable against a guy like this. So, yeah, we know that we need to mix it up.”
On if he believes Plant will widely outpoint Canelo
“I’m not going to get into specifics as far as how we get our hands raised but I stick with (what I said before), don’t be surprised if it’s easier than you think.”
Loading comments...