The uprooting of Plant: Five takeaways from the huge Armando Resendiz upset

Well, if Plant is looking for silver linings at the end of a rough weekend, there’s this: He now has one more challenge to overcome, one more setback to get revenge for and one more person to get revenge on. In other words, losing to Jose Armando Resendiz was good for his lifestyle brand. (Though not great for health, his career or his reputation.)

Here are five more mini-angles on my mind in the wake of Resendiz’s stunning upset win over Plant at Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas Saturday night:

1. May 2025 was the month of the doubleheader tune-up gone wrong.

Resendiz-Plant topped a card that also featured Jermall Charlo vs. Thomas “Cornflake” LaManna, and the intent was obvious: Plant and Charlo were both supposed to impress in victory, and thus build hype for their long-stewing grudge match, to follow on pay-per-view sometime later in the year.

But then the heavily favored fighter went and lost in the main event.

Sound familiar?

It should. This was the second time in the month of May this exact scenario played out. On May 2, Rolly Romero upended Ryan Garcia, ruining the paydays Garcia and Devin Haney were planning on collecting against each other.

What a way to bookend the month. Boxing history will recall May 2025 as the month of the “tuneupset.” (I don’t know if that term will stick, but I’m giving it a shot.)

Building to the bigger fight with a couple of smaller ones is always dangerous, and in this case, the irony is that Plant didn’t need a tune-up, but Charlo, who’d fought once in the previous 47 months, did. That was the main reason for them not to fight each other this spring: so Charlo could shake off a little rust and remind audiences of what he can do.

All of which he did in fine fashion, in large part because LaManna is, on his best day, just a gangly, gutsy clubfighter.

But Plant found a much more capable opponent in Resendiz. Switch the pairings, and Plant surely downs a spoonful of Cornflake with ease, while Resendiz at least gives Charlo a scare. Plant’s team underestimated the threat presented by the 26-year-old Mexican, plain and simple.

This turn of events doesn’t guarantee that Charlo vs. Plant is off … but it probably is, since it was a borderline tough sell on PPV even before Plant took this L.

In the two most famous modern cases of upset results being ignored — Manny Pacquiao-Erik Morales II following Morales’ loss to Zahir Raheem, and Floyd Mayweather-Zab Judah after Judah got bounced by Carlos Baldomir — there was still money to be made. Plant-Charlo needed the circumstances to be just right, which they now very much are not.

Anyway, tuneupsets are nothing new. The biggest upset ever, Buster Douglas over Mike Tyson, was a tuneupset, as a Tyson-Evander Holyfield fight was all but locked in heading into the toppling in Tokyo.

But I can’t recall ever seeing two tuneupsets in a single month like this.

I wonder if this will have any impact, at least in the short term, on how business is done in the sport. Two times qualifies as a trend — or at least as the start of a trend — and I suspect promoters considering stage-setting doubleheaders will now lean toward striking while the iron is warm rather than waiting for it to turn scalding hot.

2. The best way to bet on boxing is …

I may cover the gambling industry by day, but I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not an elite sports bettor. I’m slightly ahead of the sportsbooks lifetime, but only because I’ve taken advantage of promos, boosts, free bets, etc. I’m not a “sharp.” I don’t have some ingenious system.

But I have found a weak spot to take advantage of in boxing betting, and it hit beautifully for me in Resendiz vs. Plant.

Online sportsbooks offer “live betting,” also known as “in-game betting,” with dynamic odds that change from moment to moment and allow you to wager after the contest has begun.

And I’ve found that when a major underdog gets off to a good start that suggests he has a realistic shot at winning, the odds-making algorithms are slow to react.

At DraftKings Sportsbook, Resendiz was a +1400 (14-to-1) underdog when the fight began. He probably lost the first two rounds, but was competitive in both. Then, in the third round, he dominated Plant and may have buzzed him with a right hand.

Did I think at round’s end that Resendiz was on his way to victory? No, not really.

But was it obvious that he’d come to fight and was better than advertised and had a real shot at pulling this off? Certainly. He opened the fight at +1400, and I figured after the third round he should have been about +400 — fair odds if he had about a 20 per cent chance of winning.

But DraftKings had him at +1100, for an implied 8 per cent chance of winning. And I pounced on it.

I’ve noticed this trend in plenty of previous fights, that the sportsbooks are reluctant to swing their odds too wildly until it’s obvious that they need to.

Naturally, betting the underdogs in these spots doesn’t always pan out. They frequently go on to lose after enjoying a good early moment or two. But the value is there, and long-term, you can beat the books betting live ‘dogs before the lines properly adjust.

For what it’s worth, I ended up cashing out my bet for slightly less than full value. After the 10th round, DraftKings was offering me about 80 per cent of my potential return, and that seemed like the right price to not have to sweat out the possibility of a late miracle KO for Plant or any scorecard shenanigans. Speaking of which …

3. What the hell happened to David Sutherland the last three rounds?

Oklahoma-based judge Sutherland doesn’t have a history of infuriating scorecards.

As with any judge, you can find a few to quibble with. He had Jarrell Miller vs. Andy Ruiz a draw, but so did one of the other judges that night. He scored 115-113 for Devin Haney over Vasiliy Lomachenko, which I strongly disagreed with, but Dave Moretti had an even worse 116-112 card for Haney. He was one of the judges who caused Paulie Malignaggi to lose his mind back in 2009 when he fought Juan Diaz in Texas, but once again, Sutherland’s card was only the second-worst of the three if you felt Malignaggi deserved to win.

As best I can tell, Sutherland is a fairly reliable judge. And he remained so through the first nine rounds of Resendiz-Plant. At that point in the fight, all three scorers had the Mexican ahead 86-85.

Then Sutherland lost his damned mind. The other two judges, Steve Weisfeld and Max DeLuca, gave Resendiz the final three rounds and had him winning 116-112, right in line with reality.

Sutherland gave all three rounds to Plant.

That includes Round 10, in which, according to CompuBox, Resendiz outlanded Plant 28-9. In all three rounds, the stats said the underdog outlanded the favorite by double digits while throwing more and landing at a higher percentage.

Is it possible for someone to find one round of the three to give Plant? Sure. But all three? Not without extreme suspicion.

It’s fair to wonder if Sutherland got his corners confused and flipped his scorecard for the final three rounds. It’s fair to wonder if he suddenly wasn’t feeling well and struggled to see straight and focus on the action in front of him. It is, unfortunately, fair to wonder if he realized that he had the “house” fighter trailing through nine and made a conscious decision to do something about that.

I don’t believe the latter scenario is what happened. But I also don’t believe it’s all that significantly more far-fetched than the other two scenarios. None of them make a whole lot of sense or align with Sutherland’s lengthy judging career prior to the final three rounds on Saturday night.

4. Resendiz: Most out-of-left-field Fighter of the Year candidate ever?

To be clear, Resendiz is not a candidate for Fighter of the Year yet. Upset of the Year? Absolutely. But one win over Caleb Plant (plus a February KO of unknown Fernando Paliza in Guadalajara) does not a Fighter of the Year campaign make.

But what if Resendiz now gets the Charlo fight that Plant was being lined up for? That’s reportedly one option being considered. To come from relative obscurity to beat both Plant and Charlo — the latter of whom is still undefeated — in a single year is one hell of a story.

And I would consider Resendiz close to 50/50 to beat Charlo. I don’t think he fluked into beating Plant or just caught him on an off-night. Resendiz, trained by the outstanding Manny Robles, has the look of a fighter finding his stride in his mid 20s. He exuded confidence against Plant. He was fast, strong, sharp, clever.

The guy we saw in the ring at Mandalay Bay is a serious threat to a Charlo who is now 35, is shaking off rust and looked a bit physically soft as a super middleweight. Dominating LaManna proved nothing. Charlo merely did what he was supposed to do.

The point is, if Resendiz gets a Charlo fight, he can win a Charlo fight. He’ll need various other Fighter of the Year candidates to fail to shine in the second half of the year. But if that all falls into place, he could win Fighter of the Year despite entering the year on absolutely nobody’s radar. (Resendiz didn’t fight in 2024, period, and lost his last fight of 2023.)

The last Fighter of the Year who comes even close to this rise from obscurity is Glen Johnson in 2004, the year he flattened Roy Jones and then took the light heavyweight championship from Antonio Tarver by controversial decision.

There are a whole lot of “ifs” involved in the Resendiz-as-Fighter-of-the-Year conversation. It’s not even a conversation yet, really. But if you like taking wacky scenarios and playing them out in your mind to their wackiest possible conclusions, this is a fun mind-melter to stew on.

5. Caleb’s face-Plant

Plant didn’t just suffer an upset loss. He got bloodied and beaten up along the way. He looked vulnerable enough — wobbled a few times, unable to keep Resendiz off of him, unable to find a home for his big left hook — that it forced us to consider some context.

Oh, yeah, Plant did look like crap for half a fight last time out against Trevor McCumby. Oh, yeah, Plant did take a pounding against David Benavidez in the fight before that, a contest that arguably should have been stopped in the latter stages.

Plant may just be spent at age 32. It feels sudden, given how we all perceived him three days ago. But maybe it’s not so sudden. Maybe we’ve been building to this for the last year or two.

Not to make this about me, but this coming weekend, I’m hosting both my daughter’s high school graduation party and my mother’s 80th birthday party. I have circle-of-life stuff on my mind more than usual.

Boxing gave us a heaping serving of circle-of-life business this weekend. Hall of Famer Mike McCallum died; both Resendiz and Plant are expecting babies.

Then there’s the metaphorical. Boxing serves as a metaphor for the human experience better than any other sport — boxing is in fact the sport that broadcasters in other sports often turn to for their metaphorical references, comparing a football game to a “heavyweight title fight,” saying a tennis underdog has a “puncher’s chance,” etc.

What happened to Plant on Saturday night is a reminder that every boxing career has an arc, and what goes up must come down. Plant had a fine run, held some titles, earned some paydays. But gravity is not his friend right now.

And if I’m wrong, well, I’m giving him one more thing to prove on the next leg of the Revenge Tour.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of and the author of 2014’s . He can be reached on , , or , or via email at [email protected].