Three days out from Saturday’s card at T-Mobile Arena, the news cycle is accelerating. The second fight week roundup, picking up where the first one left off.

Garcia skipped the first face-off, so Benn faced off with his dad. The champion was a no-show at Tuesday’s scheduled staredown at the designated media site in Las Vegas, leaving Benn standing in front of the cameras until Nigel Benn stepped in for an impromptu father-son face-off, joking about whether his son might back down after being stood up. Benn’s response: “I apologise for Ryan doing what Ryan does and bottling it,” before adding a promise: come Saturday, Garcia is in for a real, real shock. Garcia’s explanation arrived via Instagram story, posted mid-video-game session: “Back to the sauna you go, sausage getting cooked every way.” The pattern is familiar, Garcia was fined $5,000 by the WBC before the Barrios fight for missing a mandatory weight-check deadline, and famously missed weight for Haney. Meanwhile the cut Garcia is taunting is reportedly a brutal one, with Benn now saying he jumps all the way to 168 pounds after Saturday, making this his one and only night at welterweight, win or lose. The contrast in fight weeks could not be starker: while Benn grinds through the last days of a four-year weight cut, Garcia has been spotted around Las Vegas relaxed enough to game through a face-off and grab burgers with content creator Nina Drama. Confidence or complacency, Friday’s scale renders the verdict on both men. The two are scheduled to actually see each other Thursday at the final press conference. Probably.

Ryan Garcia, mid-fight-week, mid-burger, in Las Vegas with content creator Nina Drama. His opponent’s week involves a sauna. (Photo courtesy of Champion Management)

Don King is trying to cancel the co-main event. Don King Productions sent TKO a cease-and-desist demanding the immediate cancellation of Opetaia vs. Mikaelian, claiming an exclusive worldwide promotional agreement with the WBC cruiserweight champion and calling Zuffa’s dealmaking “a clear tortious interference,” as we reported when the letter surfaced. The letter alleges Dana White and Zuffa COO Harrison Whitman personally met virtually with King about a services deal that never closed, then went around him through Mikaelian’s manager and attorney. King has run this play before, he blocked Jarrell Miller vs. Michael Hunter last year on similar contract claims, and per World Boxing News, White is refusing to budge. So the co-main now features a champion suing four sanctioning bodies, a challenger the WBC may strip for showing up, and the 95-year-old OG of pugilistic lawfare demanding the whole thing disappear by Saturday. The sanctioning war our undercard coverage described has officially become a genre.

TKO’s president explained the business, on the record. Speaking at an investor conference, Mark Shapiro laid out the structure plainly: TKO works with its Saudi partners to stage two to three super fights per year, this weekend being one, and in that relationship TKO is paid to negotiate media rights and promote the event, with Dana White and Nick Khan doing what they do. It is the clearest public statement yet of how the new economics work: the checkbook in Riyadh carries the risk, and the promoter of record on Saturday is The Ring, with Golden Boy and Zuffa as co-promoters handling the show for a fee. File that under things worth remembering every time this card gets called a Zuffa gamble.

The last buy button in America is at your local bar. Joe Hand Promotions announced it has secured exclusive US commercial rights to Saturday’s card, meaning bars and restaurants pay for the broadcast the way they always have, even as home viewers get it free with a Paramount+ login. It is a telling detail about the new model: the consumer pay-per-view is dead in America, but the commercial one, the version bars have bought since the closed-circuit days, is alive and well. Joe Hand Jr. called Mexican Independence Day weekend combat sports’ Super Bowl, and on that he has history firmly on his side, from Chavez to De La Hoya to Canelo on this same weekend. If you want the communal version of fight night, licensed venues are findable through the distributor’s bar finder.

Garcia says a mature camp means a short night. At his final workout in Calabasas, The Ring found a calmer champion, no chaos, no drama, talking about understanding what he has to do. The prediction stayed violent: “This fight will last five rounds or less. If it’s going past six, then he might leave in a stretcher.” He also waved off the Crawford factor entirely, saying Benn could train next to him and know the entire game plan and still not stop it.

The hype machine is fully on. Zuffa released its Road to Garcia vs. Benn documentary on YouTube, the fighters are hitting Pat McAfee, First Take, Fallon, Impaulsive, Club Shay Shay, and All the Smoke this week, and Paramount+ carries the card not just in the US but across Latin America, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and Germany. The official schedule is set: final press conference Thursday, official weigh-in Friday followed by the public ceremonial weigh-in at the plaza outside T-Mobile Arena, first bell Saturday at 5 pm ET on Paramount+.

Full coverage continues through fight night: Thursday’s press conference, Friday’s weigh-in, where Benn makes 147 for the first time in 1,610 days, and live results Saturday.