Tommy Fury is now confirmed to be missing his fight against Jake Paul, which was due to take place on August 6 in New York. However, the event will still take take place with Hasim Rahman Jr looking set to take his place alongside Amanda Serrano vs Brenda Carbajal as the co-main event at Madison Square Garden.
Rahman Jr is the son of former world heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman and a former sparring partner of Paul's. The 31-year-old fights out of Baltimore, Maryland and has a record of 12-1, having suffered his first defeat in April.
The heavyweight is part of the Paul camp and could well be the step-up in standard of opponent which Paul was looking for with Fury. The 25-yeat-old YouTube star has a record of 5-0 in professional bouts, however, he is yet to face a full-time boxer with fights against MMA stars Tyron Woodley and Ben Askren his latest victories.
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Rahman Jr backed Paul to knockout Fury in the original bout, tweeting his support of his compatriot in a post just last month, before Fury's visa issues emerged. On Twitter, he responded to a tweet from two-weight world champion Paulie Malignaggi which asked: "Haven’t watched any Tommy fury fights lol. Any thoughts?".
Rahman was glowing in his praise of former sparring partner Paul, responding with his views: "Hmmm @jakepaul by knockout". Rahman has weighed as high as 269lb during his career, which could well be a challenge against his opponent here, with Paul known as a cruiserweight; which has a 200lb weight limit.
The pair have sparred regularly down the years and in a recent interview with Sky Sports, Rahman spoke about Paul's improvement in a recent session. He said: "I kind of expected the same thing that I boxed the first time - and that's not what I got.
"I got somebody that had a better right hand, I had somebody that was actually stepping in with the jab. The best thing about it is - I had somebody that could control his distance."
He added: "The first time he couldn't really do anything like that. He was really just fighting. I could just tell that he had heart. Now he's using his distance better, he's actually stepping into his jab, instead of just putting it there, and he's throwing a good one-two.
He's definitely progressing and he's getting a lot better. I think that he'll handle Nate Robinson pretty easy."
