Jake Paul desperately attempted to salvage his doomed fight with Tommy Fury, even sending the Brit a private message to help push the visa process along.
Fury was unable to travel to America due to an issue with his visa, and as such was forced to once again pull out of a contracted fight with Paul. The duo were going to headline Madison Square Garden, but Paul will now instead face Hasim Rahman Jr at the famed New York City venue.
The American's team, which includes his business partner and former UFC CFO Nakisa Bidarian, questioned Fury's story about visa problems. And they spoke with some high-ranking lawyers in an effort to secure him an Embassy appointment and a possibly expedited visa.
But it wasn't to be, with Paul telling ESPN : "We didn't hear from him, his team didn't hear from him and he made no effort to try and get into the United States to make the fight happen.
"I told him I'd give him until Wednesday to figure this out and didn't hear from him at all, there was no effort put in. I personally DM'd him saying 'yo, I have people ready to get you your visa inside the Embassy, I have the best lawyers'."
Fury wasn't interested in taking Paul up on his offer, instead attempting to sort out the issue on his own end, with promoter Frank Warren having to front up with the press for the past week. He eventually missed Paul's Wednesday afternoon deadline and released a statement, which included a line about being willing to fight any time, any place, anywhere.
But he laughed off the YouTuber's suggestion that they hastily arrange a fight in the UK after his bout with Rahman Jr. The catch to the deal was that Fury must accept a $500,000 purse, which would be a 75 per cent cut from what he was set to make in New York.
"He didn't even look at my DM," Paul added. "Normally he looks at all of the DMs that I send him, he replies to all my stories and he literally went into hiding so I had to send him the termination notice."
Paul's manager Bidarian also appeared during the YouTuber's interview with ESPN to make brief comments, although he is known for preferring to stay behind the cameras. And he appeared to cast doubt on Fury's story that he was turned away at Heathrow Airport.
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The beliefe is that such a dramatic scene featuring a reality TV star as famous as Tommy, whose brother is world champion Tyson and girlfriend is model Molly-Mae Hague, would be caught on a phone camera somewhere. Fury has over 3million followers and is frequently in the news being pictured by paparazzi, which they feel would make such an incident tough to do under the radar.
"We understand he was stopped at London Heathrow airport," Bidarian explained. "But we have no evidence of that, Jake can tell you how he views that."
Paul added: "We don't even know if that actually happened. He's one of the UK's biggest stars, and he went to an airport, and there's no pictures of him there, no footage, nothing?
"He was apparently there for the whole entire day trying to figure it out. Apparently, but we don't even know if he actually got denied entry into the United States."
