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As the ancient wiseman Delmar once said, "I'm with you fellers".
The person with absolutely no leverage in this was Nero.
I fully expect that he, as Joh's agent, tried to get the M's to grease the wheels with some kind of buyout. Why else get himself involved for three days of "conversations" with Z? Joh probably gave him three days to try and negotiate some kind of buyout that didn't taint his honor. But in the end, he had no leverage to get anything. Joh was going home, buyout or no buyout. Z was ok with Joh coming back for $8 million. Nero was stuck in the middle, between a rock and a hard place with nothing but a brittle twig in hand.