One day to the scale, two to the bell. The third fight week roundup, picking up where part one and part two left off.

The final press conference had taxes, dads, a confiscated egg, and a shush. Thursday’s presser ran professional until it very much didn’t. Benn came with the sharpest line of fight week: “If I was you I’d focus on your IRS problems. Stay away from the tables bro.” Garcia’s counter: “Did he say taxes? I bet I got way more money than you,” before turning on Benn’s corner entirely: “I heard his dad talking like he was gonna knock me out. Bet he won’t. Your dad’s lying to you.” He claimed Benn “isn’t even at 150 pounds” already, promised Benn’s exit from the ring would not be safe and that the blame would belong to Nigel, and, at the face-off, tried to bring an egg on stage before security confiscated it, drawing a shrug: “You caught me.” Benn answered with a finger to the lips and “I won’t do nothing,” Garcia kept talking, and Dana White stepped between them for the second time this promotion: “I’m good. You guys are freaking me out.” Benn’s parting promise was about Friday, not Saturday: he will make weight, and look great doing it. Ryan Garcia is gonna Ryan Garcia.

Teofimo Lopez crashed the party in disguise. The WBA welterweight champion infiltrated the press conference incognito before revealing himself with a yell of “I’M HERE!”, and later embraced both fighters. Lopez has been calling for the Garcia-Benn winner since the fight was announced. Saturday’s winner now has a mandatory challenger, a possible Haney rematch, and a man in a disguise all waiting in line.

The weight war has numbers on it now: 175 versus 157. The contractual detail driving the final days: Benn has no rehydration clause, so once he touches 147 on Friday’s scale he can regain freely, and Garcia is publicly projecting the gap. “He’s about to be 170, 175 in the ring,” Garcia said at media day, estimating himself around 157 and conceding a possible 20-pound fight-night deficit before promising to win anyway. His deeper point is autobiographical: against Gervonta Davis he fought under both a catchweight and a rehydration cap, and he pointedly declined to impose the same on Benn. So, in his words, no crybaby stuff. Benn’s side is not disputing the suffering, he told the BBC the cut has been like being dragged through hell. Friday’s scale was always the fight before the fight. Now both men have agreed on it in public.

Dana White declared war on Eddie Hearn, and Fury-Joshua is wobbling. Speaking to IFLTV at fight week media, White went off: “I’m not Eddie Hearn. We are not the same,” saying he has never seen a promoter hurt a fight more, and warning that Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua is very close to falling through entirely. The saga has swung daily, Wembley talks reopening, Fury calling out Usyk, Hearn at 60 percent, and the one man who can settle it, Turki Alalshikh, in town for Saturday and saying nothing. Barry Hearn is betting the company on Wembley, and the backup plan just said no.

Dana closed the book on the Oscar showdown, and Garcia wrote the epitaph. Asked on Paramount’s fight week programming about the long-awaited fireworks with De La Hoya, White waved it off flatly: “I don’t think Oscar and I are going to run into each other,” and dropped real news in the process: Garcia has one fight left on his Golden Boy deal after Saturday, settling the week’s conflicting reports. Garcia described the state of things with his lifelong promoter to CBS in the language of a checkout line: “Very cordial. Very just, good to see you, have a good day. Nothing too deep,” adding that things are just business. In the same interview he named his favorite press conferences growing up: Oscar De La Hoya’s and Floyd Mayweather’s. The man whose pressers made him fall in love with the sport was absent from the final one of his biggest fight. Nine years of promoter war, chronicled here in full, ending in an empty chair and a contract countdown.

Don King tried to cancel the co-main. Everyone involved shrugged. The cease-and-desist demanding Opetaia vs. Mikaelian be scrapped, which we covered when the letter surfaced, has been answered by everyone it concerns. White: “He’s fighting this weekend,” with no Plan B needed. Mikaelian: “It’s just noise.” Opetaia, a man already suing four sanctioning bodies: “That’s just boxing, man.” If the WBC strips Mikaelian for going through with it, the belt likely falls to Michal Cieslak, already penciled in against David Benavidez in December, meaning Saturday’s winner may end up chasing the very title being confiscated for showing up.

The media tour turned into its own undercard. On ESPN’s First Take, Garcia called Benn delusional and landed the most pointed shot of the week: “This guy is raving about a fight he put a rehydration clause on,” a reference to the Eubank Jr. rematch that flips Benn’s own weight-war complaints back on him. His five-rounds reasoning: he has studied Benn’s whole career and Benn is simply not at his level. Told ESPN separately why confidence won’t save the challenger: “Your body has a breaking point, your mind has a breaking point.” Benn’s answer to all of it, smiling: “I’m just excited to smack this kid in the face. That’s literally it. Like, there’s nothing else.” He also credited Zuffa for sticking true to their word and Dana for putting ego aside.

The winner gets an obsidian belt and a diamond ring. The WBC unveiled the Tollan Topiltzin Belt for Saturday’s winner, obsidian, leather, and gold honoring the ancient Toltec capital, revealed at a Mexico City ceremony with costumed pre-Hispanic dancers and billed as the heaviest belt the WBC has ever made, plus a diamond ring worthy of a Super Bowl champion. Dana White made sure it got its moment Thursday, calling the fighters back on stage after the face-off had already wrapped: “We need one more for the WBC belt.” A gracious touch from the man whose promotion is built on making sanctioning bodies optional. It carries weight for the challenger too: the WBC strap is the same organization’s belt Nigel Benn won at super middleweight in 1992.

One event left before the bell: Friday’s weigh-in at the plaza outside T-Mobile Arena, where Benn touches 147 for the first time in 1,610 days. Watch his face, not the number. Full coverage through fight night: the weigh-in report and live results Saturday.