Tyson Fury's promoters have said that he got impatient after a number of stumbling blocks emerged to stop him facing Oleksandr Usyk for the undisputed title.
A deal was on offer from a country in the Middle East to have Anthony Joshua and Dillian Whyte paid step aside money to allow Fury and Usyk to fight for all of the belts.
But with both Whyte and Joshua wanting the next title shot, massive financial demands being made and issues around timing, the bout was ultimately shelved.
Fury is now set to face mandatory challenger Whyte for his WBC heavyweight title in a mandatory defence, while Joshua and Usyk will rematch for the WBA, IBF and WBO belts in their contractually obligated second fight.
And Bob Arum, Fury's American promoter, has said that the deal got "so convoluted" that Fury ultimately made the frustrating choice to take the initially planned bout with Whyte.
"That was a whole deal that was so convoluted," Arum told FightHype. "With all good intentions on their [the Middle Eastern country's] part, it wasn't going to happen.
"Not only did they have to pay for the Usyk fight with Fury, they also had to pay step aside to Joshua which was a huge amount and step aside for two fights to Whyte.
"Then there was a whole problem with the television rights and it wasn't going to come together."
Timing also proved a factor, with staging a bout in April difficult in the Middle East due to the Muslim month of Ramadan where people must fast during the day.
The bout would instead have been pushed to June, leaving Fury out of the ring for eight months when he has insisted on a quick turnaround from his October trilogy with Deontay Wilder.
"They couldn't do the fight in April because of Ramadan so we were talking about, at best, doing the fight in June and Tyson just got impatient with the whole thing," Arum explained.
And Fury's British promoter Frank Warren, whose Queensberry Promotions officially won the purse bid for Fury vs Whyte with a record-breaking £31million offer, has said that it mostly came down to money.
Speaking with his promotional company's own YouTube channel, Warren declared the discussion as "irrelevant" since they are now focusing 100 per cent on promoting the bout with Whyte, expected to be in the UK.
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"It was nearly done," Warren admitted of the mega money Fury vs Usyk deal. "But unfortunately it wasn't.
"At this moment it's pretty irrelevant because we are where we are and that conversation is for another time.
"Tyson was up for it, but at the end of the day some of the financial demands that were being made to step aside were just impossible to accomadate."
Joshua's promoter Eddie Hearn has accused Fury of "bottling" a fight with Usyk, and says that in his ideal world he would have had a non-title fight over ten rounds in March.
But he is now focusing his attentions on finally nailing down a May date for his man's rematch, with an undisputed fight likely next on the horizon for the winners.
"Fury's made it clear... I see all his instagram stuff laughy laughy, but he's actually the one who didn't want to fight Usyk," Hearn told Boxing Social before the purse bid.
