Just to play devils advocate a little here.
If Verb signed the contract, and accepted the deposit with a date on the contract. As a business owner if you come back saying, I want to change the date in the contract so I can help prepare for a different battle with your main competitor. I mean I kinda get why ARP wouldn't want to do that. If Verb signed the contract he signed the contract.
On a personal level I think ARP should just let him reschedule it, and generally I'm on the battlers side. But if this is what happened I do understand ARPs point of view to a degree.
I don't know the order of events or what exactly was agreed upon and when though