Caleb Plant Stops Mike Lee In Three Rounds, Retains IBF Super Middleweight Title
Caleb Plant promised to teach Mike Lee something he never learned while studying in Notre Dame and delivered that lesson in less than eight minutes of in-ring action.
After four knockdowns in less than three complete rounds, Plant dominated Lee en route to a quick first defense of his IBF super middleweight title. The fight took place on a FOX-televised prelim card that served to lead in to the pay-per-view portion of the card headlined by Manny Pacquiao vs. Keith Thurman.
Plant connected on a big left hand in the first round to drop Lee after taking control of the bout from the opening bell. Lee survived and continued fighting, but never put Plant under any danger as the champion consistently landed big combinations. After a relatively quiet second round, Plant quickly dispatched of Lee in the following round.
The first knockdown of the third round came from a big right hand that Plant threw. After Lee got back up, he went back down just seconds later thanks to another right hand from Plant. Once Lee recovered from the second knockdown, he went into a very aggressive fighting style to throw off Plant, but the champion remained unfazed. Plant landed a left hook to Lee that sent him to the canvas for the final time as the referee stopped the fight there.
This was Plant’s first title defense since winning the belt back in January with a win over Jose Uzcategui. After the fight, Plant said he would be interested in facing the winner of the WBC super middleweight title fight between Anthony Dirrell and David Benavidez in September, a title bout that was announced hours before Plant stepped into the ring.
Lee was stepping down from light heavyweight to super middleweight for this fight, which was his first world title challenge. Lee, who graduated from the University of Notre Dame, saw his unbeaten record come to an end after winning his first 21 fights.
Fightful has live coverage of the entire event in progress and can be seen at this link.
