Before he left the stage, though, Kambosos’ father, Jim, nearly came to blows with a member of the Haney camp before they were pulled apart.

“I told him he wasn’t a true champion because true champions make weight,” Haney said. “They don’t got to take multiple times to make weight. We trained for six to eight weeks to be prepared to make weight on our first go, so I told him he’s not a true champion and he’s a bitch.”

Those comments riled the 500-strong crowd, who had paid $20 each to attend the event, with the Hellas Fan Club — the vocal Greek supporters group that has four bays allocated to them on Sunday — hurling insults at the Haney camp.

When they spotted NBA star Damian Lillard, who has flown in from the US to support Haney, they showered him with insults, too, prompting the Portland Trailblazers point guard to laugh in reply.

Haney has been buoyed by the 11th-hour decision by Australian authorities to grant his father, Bill, a visa after rejecting it last month because he had spent 40 months in jail after being found guilty of drug charges relating to two kilograms of cocaine.

The 23-year-old had left the building by the time Kambosos returned at 11.40am and duly made weight at 134.49 pounds.

Asked what he’d done to shed the weight, Kambosos quipped: “I took a piss. It was easy. I was going to have a Greek coffee. I thought, let me make the weight, then I’ll have a Greek coffee. See you all tomorrow.”

In reality, all Kambosos needed to do was have a long, hot shower and sweat out a few pounds.

The weigh-in shenanigans provided one last twist to a dramatic build-up to the fight, which will determine the first undisputed lightweight champion since the four-belt era began in 2004.

As the fight draws nearer, the Haney camp has tried to bully Kambosos, which doesn’t seem to make sense because he’s a boxer who thrives having a large chip on his shoulder.

While Haney is the master tactician, Kambosos is the Spartan warrior who backs himself to outlast his opponent, winning by any means.

The most prized possession in his gym bag is The Art of War. He takes it everywhere he goes.

“I’ve had it since I was 14 years old,” Kambosos, 28, told the Herald during an interview last month, pulling it out of his bag and putting it on a shelf at his Mortdale gym. “I take it out and pick different moments from it.”

The most important takeaway from the ancient tome is that all warfare is based on deception. “And fighting is like war,” he continued. “It is deception.”

Reporters have asked him repeatedly about the booming overhand right he landed against Teofimo Lopez in the first round of their fight in New York last November and want to know if he plans to surprise Haney at Marvel Stadium just as he did Lopez at Madison Square Garden.

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It’s a silly question, of course. Imagine if Kambosos showed his hand so easily? Sun Tzu would not approve.

“Against Lopez, I was thinking, ‘How am I going to get my respect?’” Kambosos recalled. “I know, ‘I’ll land a beautiful right hand’. I’m going to set him up. Art of War. Deception. So, I caught a lot of shots. Made him open up a little bit more. I knew in camp he gets heavy on that front foot when he throws that jab. That lazy jab. So I pulled him back, pulled him back, saw him get heavy, then landed it clean and put him down. Then I could see the respect in his eyes. Now we’re in a fight.

“Lopez didn’t know what he was walking into. Neither does Devin Haney. These guys for some reason have this stereotype of Australian boxers that we just come forward. He thinks I have one style — but I have many. I have lots of deception in it. I’m moving, I’m creating angles, I’m throwing three or four punches and then I’m gone again.”

Whether he can deceive Haney is another matter.

Some believe the fact that he didn’t make weight will hurt him psychologically. Others theorised it could be a ploy to get inside Haney’s head or, at the very least, sell a few more tickets and pay-for-view subscriptions.

“It changes nothing,” he said one last time. “It changes his mindset now. Trust me. Art of War. Deception.”

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