Tyson Fury was forced to face off with thin air after Dillian Whyte refused to show up for their press conference.
Fury will put his heavyweight title on the line for the second time when he takes on Whyte at Wembley on April 23.
Whyte delayed signing for the fight until the last minute after Fury's promoters Frank Warren and Bob Arum won the purse bid with an offer of £31million.
He has maintained a resolute silence on social media and opted not to fly over from his training camp in Portugal for the first head-to-head meeting.
And so Fury struck the traditional face-off poses alone as he heralded the fight as the "Tyson Fury roadshow".
"For him not to be a part of this, I think it messes up his legacy a bit," Fury said of Whyte's absence.
"In years to come, if it is a good fight, he didn't have any build-up in the media, he'll be in no photographs. It's a shame, there will be nothing for his family to look back on.
"This is the promoters' argument, this is not the boxers'. This is his promoter telling him not to sell the fight because he can't make any more money.
"But surely at this level it's about him as a fighter and being part of this. He's part of this fight whether he wants it or not. I think he should be here."
Fury won his world title by knocking out Deontay Wilder in 2020 and then stopped the American for a second time in their trilogy fight last October.
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He was then mandated to fight Whyte who has waited over 1,000 days for his shot at the WBC belt.
And Fury had expected a verbal joust with his opponent before they took to the ring.
"Before I was like, 'You know what, when I say stuff about Dillian Whyte he always fires back and he gets upset and causes a bit of a ruckus’, now it’s like, ‘Say what you want about the guy’," he said
"It’s given me that much more confidence, it’s unbelievable. He’s definitely shown the white flag in my estimation."
