Canelo Alvarez and Caleb Plant couldn’t wait until November 6 to put their hands on one another.

The super middleweight champions came to blows Tuesday afternoon at the start of their press conference in Beverly Hills, California. Plant walked away from the skirmish with a significant cut beneath his right eye, the consequence of Alvarez landing a punch while Plant wore sunglasses.

Plant wiped away blood from that cut before order was restored and the press conference continued. With just 6½ weeks to go before their 12-round, 168-pound title unification fight in Las Vegas, it wasn’t clear Tuesday afternoon what impact Plant’s cut will have on his ability to spar for the biggest fight of his career.

Their confrontation began in typical promotional fashion, with Alvarez and Plant standing face-to-face on a stage, talking trash to each other. As their verbal intensified, Alvarez shoved Plant, whose hands were behind his back, backward by pushing Plant with both hands in his chest.

Plant then took several steps back toward Alvarez and grazed Alvarez with an open-handed slap to his face. Alvarez quickly fired back with a left and then a right before they were separated by numerous people involved in the promotion.

After Alvarez, Plant and their trainers spoke, Showtime’s Brian Custer asked Plant and Alvarez what led them to break boxing’s promotional protocol by actually laying hands on one another.

“Because he’s a bitch,” Plant said. “First off, all we was doing was staring at each other. He had something to say, I had something to say. He’s gonna beat me, I’m gonna beat him. And then, you know, he did what he did. So, you have to ask him that question.”

Alvarez apparently took offense to Plant’s use of the word “motherf-----” during their heated exchange.

“He can say whatever he wants to say to me, but not to my mom,” Alvarez said. “Because I’m gonna [knock] out everybody who say something to my mom. You know, and he swing first. I just push him, but he swing first. Then just, I do what I do.”

Mexico’s Alvarez, 31, and Las Vegas’ Plant, 29, will fight for Alvarez’s WBA, WBC and WBO championships and Plant’s IBF belt November 6 at MGM Grand Garden Arena. Most Internet sports books list Alvarez (56-1-2, 38 KOs) as at least an 8-1 favorite over Plant (21-0, 12 KOs) in advance of their Showtime Pay-Per-View main event.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for krikya360.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.