Usyk Vs Verhoeven set for 12-round fight at Giza — Usyk Vs Verhoeven
usyk vs verhoeven now points to Saturday at the Pyramids of Giza, where Rico Verhoeven is scheduled to meet Oleksandr Usyk in a 12-round bout for Usyk’s WBC belt. The Dutch kickboxer enters as the challenger with one professional boxing win on his record, while Usyk brings a 24-0 mark with 15 knockouts.
Rico Verhoeven’s boxing test
Verhoeven is 37 and built his reputation in kickboxing, where he compiled a 66-10 record with 21 knockouts. He has one pro boxing bout to his name, a knockout win in 2014, and he last fought in June when he beat Artem Vakhitov by unanimous decision.
That is the bridge between his past and Saturday’s assignment. He is not walking into boxing without any ring work, but the sample size is small compared with Usyk’s championship run.
Usyk’s WBC belt at stake
Usyk’s title is the prize Verhoeven is targeting, and the gap in boxing experience is obvious. The champion’s 24-0 record includes 15 knockouts, a mark that shows the level Verhoeven has to match in a format that gives him 12 rounds to do it.
Verhoeven is training with Peter Fury and has sparred with Tyson Fury in the past. That preparation sits alongside a wider trend of kickboxers moving into boxing, a path that has produced mixed results.
Kickboxers Crossing Over
Floyd Mayweather Jr. has scheduled an exhibition bout next month in Greece against Mike Zambidis, a former kickboxing champion and an icon of the K-1 circuit. The sport has seen other crossovers land differently, including Tenshin Nasukawa’s 2018 exhibition with Mayweather in Japan, where Mayweather dropped him three times in the first round before Nasukawa later fought for the WBC bantamweight title last November and lost to Takuma Inoue.
There are a few recent reference points for the kind of leap Verhoeven is making. Vitali Klitschko won several kickboxing titles before switching to boxing, Dillian Whyte challenged for the WBC world heavyweight title in 2022 and lost to Tyson Fury, and Matt Skelton fought for a world title in 2008 before retiring after losing to Anthony Joshua in 2014. Verhoeven has a better boxing start than some kickboxers, but Saturday asks for much more than that single knockout from 2014.
