IMITATION OF LIFE
“I THINK boxing is an imitation of life,” Caleb Plant says as he prepares for his biggest and most testing night in the ring when he faces Saúl ‘Canelo’ Álvarez in Las Vegas on Saturday. “You get knocked down and you get back up. You don’t quit no matter how dark it gets, or whatever adversity passes your way. You just got to keep biting down and fighting, coming up the other side and not quitting, no matter what. The things that happened in my life have prepared me for this moment.”
Boxing is littered with bleak and troubling backstories. The men and women who show such courage and resolve whenever they step into the ring have invariably suffered in their past lives. They have a deeper hunger and determination than more ordinary people and can withstand the hardship and the hurt of the ring because they have been steeled by all they have endured.
Yet, even in boxing, the story of Caleb Plant stands out as being bruising. Plant grew up in a trailer in the impoverished setting of Ashland City, a small settlement outside Nashville in Tennessee, and he describes his childhood as “chaotic.” His mother had
