Caleb Plants drop Jose Uzcategui twice, takes IBF title

By Wil Esco @wil_esco

Caleb Plant shocked Jose Uzcategui in tonight’s FS1 main event, and realized his dream of becoming a super middleweight world champion. Plant took a unanimous decision on official scores of 116-110, 116-110, and 115-111 to win the IBF title, while BLH scored the fight wider for Plant, 117-109.

Plant started the fight quickly, as he met the aggressive Uzcategui with sharp jabs and hooks. But really, Uzcategui was only aggressive with his movement as he consistently walked forward but threw very few punches while instead looking to land something big. It was very reminicent of Uzcategui’s last lackluster outing, just against a much better opponent. And Plant was just too good to let Uzcategui off the hook with a Hail Mary punch, and he instead picked Uzcategui off with punches as Uzcategui walked forward.

In the second round it became clear that Uzcategui was in for a long night when he exchanged with Plant and got dropped.

PBC✔@premierboxing

.@SweetHandsPlant lands robust combo and sends @JoseBolivitaU to the canvas in 2nd RD! #PBConFS1 #UzcateguiPlant 130 10:25 AM – Jan 14, 2019 89 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

Then in the fourth round Plant would catch Uzcategui again in an exchange, which would put Uzcategui on the seat of his pants and down a healthy margin on the scorecards early.

PBC✔@premierboxing

.@SweetHandsPlant sends @JoseBolivitaU back to the canvas!!!!!! #PBConFS1 #UzcateguiPlant 250 10:31 AM – Jan 14, 2019 171 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

Plant would start to slow down a little by the middle rounds but the punch output he was forced to put up with Uzcategui’s pressure, but Uzcategui still didn’t throw many punches and allowed himself to get tied up quite often. That took a lot of time off the clock while Uzcategui had plenty of ground to make up.

Uzcategui would eventually start getting things going in a better direction by the final third of the fight, but by then it was just too little too late. Uzcategui just couldn’t overcome the deficit from the early knockdowns before the final bell rang. And with the win Plant moves to 18-0, 10 KOs while Uzcategui’s record drops to 28-3, 23 KOs.

Final CompuBox stats had Plant landing 217 of 707 total punches (30.7%) with Uzcategui landing 157 of 547 (28.8%).

In the opening televised bout prospect Brandon Figueroa steamrolled Moises Flores in their super bantamweight bout. Figueroa (18-0, 13 KOs) would get right to work, strafing Flores (25-2, 17 KOs) with power shots galore, and eventually put him down for good in Round 3.