Cruiserweight Jake Paul should have been fighting Hasim Rahman Jr on Saturday at Madison Square Garden live on Showtime pay-per-view.
However, news broke last weekend that the sixth fight in the career of the ‘Problem Child’ was pulled due to a weight dispute.
Both fighters blamed one another for the cancellation after Rahman could not meet the revised weight of 205lbs, five pounds north of the original agreement.
Paul’s promotional company MVP described Rahman as ‘deceiving’ and ‘calculated’ in their official statement.
“MVP and Jake Paul will not reward someone that has conducted themselves in such a deceiving and calculated manner.”
Rahman, who has been fighting at heavyweight, reportedly signed to fight at 200lbs on July 6 but weighed 16 pounds more the next day.
In his last fight, a stoppage loss to James McKenzie Morrison, Rahman weighed in at 224lbs.
It was then revealed the 31-year-old had only lost one pound and would only fight Paul at 215lbs which eventually pulled the plug on the fight.
One man who somehow predicted the cancellation was Shawn Porter.
The former two-time welterweight champion spoke to FightHub and told of how the situation would play out.
“He’s [Rahman] in a higher weight, they’re gonna ask him, force him to pull his weight down.”
“They’ll massage it, Jake Paul, they’ll massage it. They’ll cancel the fight and make it all Hasim’s fault and they won’t take the rap for anything. He has a way of doing this so that he’s covered all of the bases.”
Rahman agreed to the fight on four weeks notice after Tommy Fury withdrew from fighting Paul for a second successive time. He responded to the news that the fight was cancelled and laid the blame directly at Jake Paul.
“Jake and his ‘team’ cancelled this fight, not me! I signed the contract to make 200lbs in the three weeks, but my body wouldn’t let me do it.”
“Where in boxing do you see them cancel fights a week in advance? There are penalties involved, I’ll fight you for the $5,000 minimum. He said he beat my arse at 230, so what’s the problem fighting me at 215 or 210, it’s clearly them not wanting to fight, it’s them not wanting the fight.”
“I never said I didn’t want this fight. I conclude they’re scared, they tried to drain me down. I told them I couldn’t get all the way down to cruiserweight, it’s an astronomical feat, I’d have to lose a pound per day over 30 days to make 200lbs.”
“Still, if I didn’t make the weight, we had a replacement on the side, the Muslim boxer, Muhsin Cason, he campaigns at cruiserweight, he didn’t need to drain himself, he could have saved the show. But he doesn’t want to fight a real fight, a real boxer, he wanted to drain me down and fight a shell of me.”
Eddie Hearn and Dana White have had their say on the situation believing poor ticket sales also had a hand in the August 6 show being cancelled.