The Fight Has Canceled, Hasim Rahman Jr. Claims Jake Paul Scared Of Him
FightersTalkTV.com – Hasim Rahman Jr. was scheduled to fight against Jake Paul this upcoming Saturday, August 6 at Madison Square Garden in New York. But a week before the match day, Paul and his team canceled the fight due to a weight dispute.
The cancelation was confirmed by Most Valuable Promotion, which was co-founded by Paul, that the show would not go forward because of Rahman’s inability to make the agreed upon weight of 200 pounds. A statement from MVP says that Rahman weighed in at 216 pounds when he accepted the fight on July 7. They also claim that weekly weight checks required by the New York State Athletic Commission were “not made in good faith” and that Rahman had lost less than a single pound after more than three weeks.
Jake Paul canceled his upcoming fight against Hasim Rahman Jr. which scheduled this Saturday, August 6.
“MVP and Jake Paul will not reward someone that has conducted themselves in such a deceiving and calculated manner. Therefore, MVP is left with no choice but to cancel the August 6th event,” reads the statement.
Jake Paul Decided To Canceled The Fight Against Hasim Rahman Jr.
Rahman Jr, a heavyweight with a record of 12-1, responded by tweeting: “Jake and his ‘team’ cancelled this fight, not me! The fight isn’t happening on there accord not MINE!” He also retweeted several users who claimed it was Paul who had backed out of the bout.
The son of the legend Hasim Rahman also says in the video released on social media to dispute Paul’s reasoning, saying that he would have taken a pay cut to fight. Rahman added that by cancelling the fight a week out deprived him of the chance to try and lose as much weight as possible.
“I signed a contract to make 200 pounds within a three, three-and-half weeks that I had to do it,” Rahman said in a video post on Instagram a few hours after the cancellation was announced. “But I couldn’t do it. I said my body simply would not let me do it. It would not let me get down to 200 pounds.
“But where in boxing do you see them canceling fights a whole week in advance? I didn’t even get my last week to get down as low as I could. I told this man, ‘If penalties involved, keep the purse. Keep the purse. I’d fight you for the $5,000 minimum.’ That’s how much it means to me, and that’s how much faith I have in knocking him out.”
Rahman questioned that Paul has been claiming he beat him in sparring, when Rahman would have been at a weight closer to 230 pounds. If that was the case, Rahman said, why get “scared” at fighting 210 or 215 pounds?
“I would’ve beat this man with one hand, just like I did in the gym,” Rahman continued. “But let him tell it, he already beat my ass in the gym when I was 230. So if you beat me up when I was 230, what’s the problem of fighting me when I’m at 215, what’s the problem of fighting me when I’m 210?
“It’s clearly been them not wanting to fight. It’s not me pulling out of the fight. It’s them not wanting the fight. I never said that I didn’t want this fight. The only thing that I can conclude is they’re scared. They tried to drain me down. I told them I ain’t gonna be able to get all the way down to cruiserweight. It was an astronomical fee in and of itself from the beginning when they called me to spar for Anderson Silva. I told them what my weight was. I would have had to lose a pound a day for 30 days in order to make 200 pounds.”
Rahman said he was left with no other conclusion than that Paul simply did not want to face a real boxer.
“Jake Paul could’ve fought a real boxer, but he don’t want to fight a real fighter,” Rahman said. “He don’t want to fight a real fight. He wanted to drain me down and fight a shell of me, which I’m not going to allow him to do. Now, they didn’t move the goalposts and move the finish line closer and have me weigh in all these extra days early and then pull the plug on the fight like, ‘We don’t want to fight.’
“My team 100 percent still wanted to fight, still ready, willing, and able to knock out Jake Paul on Aug. 6. So y’all blame your boy Jake Paul for this fight not happening. It ain’t have nothin’ to do with me or my team. We let them know what the real reason was, and Jake Paul is scared to fight.”
If it’s just because of Rahman’s weight issue, Paul can choose to postpone the event and wait until Rahman meets the weight as contracted. But if he decided to cancel, either Paul is not ready yet to fight a real boxer, or he won’t spend much money to turn on the lights in Madison Square Garden.
