Jermall Charlo couldn’t believe what happened Saturday night after he stopped Thomas LaManna.

Charlo expected Caleb Plant to defeat Armando Resendiz rather convincingly and set up their grudge match for later this year. The long-inactive Charlo (34-0, 23 KOs) did his part by dropping LaManna (39-6-1, 18 KOs) three times and forcing a ringside physician to stop their 10-round super middleweight match one second into the sixth round at Mandalay Bay’s Michelob ULTRA Arena in Las Vegas.

Plant was a 25-1 favorite by fight night, yet Resendiz delivered when it mattered most and won their 12-round, 168-pound championship bout by split decision. Mexico’s Resendiz won the WBA interim super middleweight title from Plant and ruined any momentum Plant and Charlo could’ve built for their fight.

“Man, we gotta go back to the drawing board with this one,” Charlo said during his post-fight press conference. “Caleb Plant dropped the ball. He looked out of shape. He looked – he couldn’t have fought me tonight. … You know, I’m not here to bash nobody, talk down on nobody, but Caleb Plant dropped the ball on this one.”

Plant (23-3, 14 KOs), of Ashland City, Tennessee, thought he did enough to fend off the relentless Resendiz (16-2, 11 KOs) in a main event streamed by Amazon’s Prime Video. The judges disagreed, though that didn’t prevent Plant or Charlo from expressing interest in still moving forward with their bout.

“I want my lick back,” Charlo said after ending an 18-month layoff by beating LaManna. “I still want my lick back. I don’t care if he got the belt or not. We could make a belt. They could make a belt. Somebody make a belt. I want my lick back.”

The bad blood between Charlo, a former IBF junior middleweight and WBC middleweight champ, and Plant mostly stems from an incident after the Terence Crawford-Errol Spence Jr. weigh-in in July 2023 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Plant slapped Charlo in the face as they left the venue because the Houston native pulled on Plant’s beard and face earlier that day.

The 32-year-old Plant’s loss complicates the situation and makes Charlo-Plant less appealing to fans. Promoter Tom Brown acknowledged, though, that there remains a possibility Plant, a former IBF super middleweight champ, will still fight Charlo next.

“Everyone was putting the cart before the horse going into this fight, and I never do that,” Brown told The Ring’s Manouk Akopyan. “We have a lot of work to do now that the chips have fallen into place. We’ll decide what the best route is for everyone.”