The event may still be two months away, but things are certainly heating up for YouTubers KSI and Logan Paul’s fights against Tommy Fury and Dillon Danis respectively – to the extent Fury’s father John Fury flipped tables and brought Tuesday's (August 22) press conference to a dramatic halt.
Things were already tense in the build-up, as Paul took to Instagram Live to claim Danis “lodged himself in his [hotel] room” and is “not showing up” for their filmed face-to-face, before Danis finally arrived 40 minutes late.
And Danis couldn’t help but clap back on Twitter in relation to the delay, joking he “had a surprise in the hotel room for my birthday”, sharing yet another picture of Paul’s fiancée Nina Agdal.
However, the real drama started when Danis walked on-stage with the same Toy Story alien hat worn by Paul in his infamous 2017 video from Japan’s Aokigahara forest in which he filmed a person who had died by suicide, and then launched Prime bottles into the audience.
Paul, meanwhile, had his own surprise props, beginning with a poster appearing to show Danis in an altercation together with text saying “real fighter”, and ending with a birthday cake depicting a bloodied Danis knocked out on the floor.
“Dillon Danis, the ‘real fighter’ who got choked out by a boxer in a club,” Paul said, while holding up the poster.
Danis immediately retorted: “Your girl got f***ed by 75 other guys before you married her, shut the f*** up.”
Elsewhere, Tommy Fury insisted “YouTube boxing will be done” if he wins, while KSI – real name Olajide “JJ” Olatunji – claimed “people are going to look at me differently” if he is victorious, joking that he is “the one that can see John Cena”.
Though it was Fury’s father John, who was sat on stage with his son, who arguably stole the show, when he escalated things considerably.
As the fighters trash talked each other, he intervened and said: “Can we stop this s***e? This is getting me down.
“Let’s talk some proper stuff. People’s come here today to hear fighting talk, let’s hear it.
“It’s not kindergarten stuff, it’s serious business – men’s gonna get put to sleep in a few weeks’ time, so let’s talk about how it’s gonna happen!”
As he got increasingly agitated about wanting to get the “ball rolling”, Fury fumed: “Get the cake and shove it up you’re a***hole, before I do it.”
Then, as he complained about the “antics” between the fighters, he was seen punching a table before flipping them over. As chaos ensued, Paul got the head of Danis from his cake and lobbed it at his opponent.
The conference was then brought to a sudden pause, with a break in proceedings before the event resumed for a face-off between KSI and Fury – one which saw KSI push Fury away from him.
No face-off took place between Danis and Paul.
The boxing match involving all four fighters takes place in Manchester on 14 October.
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