The news that Oleksandr Usyk will fight Rico Verhoeven on May 23 has certainly divided opinion.

Usyk is the dominant heavyweight of this era and the Dutchman is a kickboxer and 1-0 as a boxer, from a fight that happened years ago.

Verhoven can throw hands. He can stand and fight.

But so can any number of heavyweights in the top 10 of the transnational boxing ratings in which, of course, the kickboxer is not ranked.

We have covered the flip-flopping nature of the WBC (about this subject and many others) in depth, but boxing was really split into two parties by the announcement and they were those who need to promote the fight and have something to gain from it – monetarily or covering it etc – and then everyone else.

From the everyone-else bracket which, yes, does include me, I tried to explore the positives.

I thought of Muhammad Ali and Antonio Inoki. I thought of Chuck Wepner and the bear. I thought of Wepner and Andre the Giant and yes, of Floyd Patterson against Pete Rademacher.

But only one of those was a proper boxing match. Indeed, Rademacher’s pro debut was for the world heavyweight championship, but he’d at least won Olympic gold as a boxer.

Yes, other boxers who started out as kickboxers, like Vitali Klitschko, have gone on to do well in boxing. But others, like Pele Reid – who actually beat Vitali as a kickboxer – bombed.

The thing is, Klitschko rose to the top on merit and Reid didn’t get there because he didn’t earn it as a pro.

What Verhoeven achieved in kickboxing shouldn’t carry significant weight over here.

But the reason why so many were repulsed by the news – and I wouldn’t put myself in that strong a category – is that it was just another maniacal story in a two-week period full of them. On its own, it would have been mad enough. Combine it with everything else and you can do little but shrug your shoulders and sigh.

The other thing worth noting is that it’s fair to say we’ve already had our generational fill of these.

Boxing fans didn’t ask for Francis Ngannou against Tyson Fury or Anthony Joshua and they damn sure didn’t ask for Jake Paul against Joshua.

How many times does it need to be said that boxing’s best chance of success is for the best to fight the best and to leave the circus to the clowns?

Oh, but it’s in front of the Pyramids…

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It’s often been said how the Top Rank machine has long been boxing’s most efficient.

Now, even as it is supposed to be faltering and with talk of staff cuts, they are doing commendable things.

This is despite apparent acts of sabotage.

The loss of their ESPN deal was catastrophic, but that they’ve kept so many stars active on other platforms, on other promotions, and still have one of the strongest stables in the world, is incredible.

I’m not naive enough to say if they got another big deal with need to see more Teofimo Lopez-Steve Claggett-type fights at all. But you’d like to think with how spicy the political nature of the sport has become, they’d be going all out to impress if they were to land a big deal.

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There are plenty who thrive on just writing about the sport and the lives of the people we cover but that is not the entirety of the job. There is a busy political landscape, never more so than now, and everything is being scrutinised – what you do write and, yes, more importantly, what you do not write and choose not to cover.

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Frazer Clarke is a big, friendly, talented fighter. But if I was in his brains trust I’d not have taken the Justis Huni fight at all. The type of defeat he suffered against Fabio Wardley and the hard fight against Jessie “TKV” Tshikeva does, in my opinion, require a substantial rebuild. I don’t like that fight for him at all.