Tyson Fury and Dillian Whyte must wait until Friday to discover who will win the right to stage their world title fight.
Purse bids were due to be held tomorrow for Fury's second defence of his WBC heavyweight crown.
But they will now take place on Friday after they were postponed for a second time, leaving Fury in a race against time to arrange a fight for his targeted date of March 26.
"People keep talking about March dates - that's starting to look unrealistic for a fight of this magnitude," Whyte's promoter Eddie Hearn told the BBC.
"Either March, April, early May potentially. This is the window for the fight. Depends what happens this week.
"There are so many conversations going on behind the scenes right now. Something could turn at any moment."
Fury will earn 80 per cent of any purse, with Whyte contested his award through legal channels. Should a deal not be agreed this week, Fury could be granted permission to seek an alternative opponent.
And his promoter Bob Arum has revealed Manuel Charr has emerged as a possible challenger.
Arum told talkSPORT: “If Dillian Whyte is not gonna fight for whatever reason, obviously we’re not gonna keep Tyson Fury – not gonna make him pay the price of waiting.
“Fury wants to fight and wants to fight sooner rather than later. We can look around, get a good, decent opponent for him to fight if Whyte isn’t available. You’ve got guys like Robert Helenius and Manuel Charr.
“You just look at the rankings and pick a couple of guys from the rankings who would make decent opponents. I think unless an agreement is reached with Dillian Whyte, it [the purse bid] will go ahead sometime in the coming week.
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"The WBC has decreed that Whyte will get 20 per cent of the purse bid and if the purse bid goes ahead, we’ll figure out what that 20 per cent comes to.
“I’m always optimistic that a deal gets done before the purse bid. I don’t think a purse bid does anybody any good. I think the parties should sit down, there’s plenty of money involved, and just work out a normal deal…
“Obviously there’s talks to try and settle the matter so it goes ahead without purse bids.”
