It seems silly to publish a preview of today’s fight between world heavyweight champion Oleksandsr Usyk and kickboxer Rico Verhoeven. And not only silly because the fight is silly, but also silly because the selling point of a preview, generally, is the prediction. After the writer lays it all down – the evidence at hand, the cases for and against – they make an informed pick on who will win the fight.
So, for those who don’t want their intelligence teased, let’s get that prediction out of the way early: Oleksandr Usyk will stop Rico Verhoeven.
There should be no need to explain why. By now, even to the contextually uneducated, it should be plainly obvious that Usyk, arguably the greatest heavyweight of the century, will have his way with a fighter whose only professional bout occurred 12 years ago. Fighters like Usyk, so astonishingly talented and experienced at the highest level, do not lose to fighters who have only had one professional bout. It really is that simple.
This is being sold on the spectacle. It is taking place, organizers hope, at the feet of the Pyramids of Giza. ‘What a sight that will be,’ they say. Well, that might indeed be true. Yet the truth is that anything at all happening in such a setting, whether children squabbling or even just a bird taking a shit, would be a ‘sight’. But take away the background, those pyramids and the sand, and strip whatever is happening down to only what is happening, then the true value should become apparent.
What is happening here, and the only thing that really matters, is a mismatch. It would be a mismatch if it happened next to Niagara Falls, it would be a mismatch if it happened on top of the Empire State Building, it would be a mismatch if it happened inside a gym with nobody watching, and it will be a mismatch in Egypt.
Usyk, 24-0 (15 KOs), is not only the best heavyweight in the world, he’s also widely regarded as the best boxer in the entire sport. Even his closest rivals at heavyweight, whether Agit Kabayel or Daniel Dubois, would be given little chance of beating him. So, to even just suggest that Verhoeven, 1-0 (1 KO), might prosper against the Ukrainian would be the ramblings of the unhinged.
We’ve been here before, of course. Not at the feet of pyramids, admittedly, but we’ve seen this kind of mismatch before. We’ve seen them so many times, in fact, it’s a mystery why there is any appetite whatsoever in making more. Not one – whether Conor McGregor taking on Floyd Mayweather or Francis Ngannou getting splattered by Anthony Joshua – have been worthwhile.
Some might instead point to MMA star Ngannou taking on Tyson Fury in 2023 when the then-WBC heavyweight champion turned up overweight, undertrained and uninterested. He was fortunate to get the decision after 10 rounds. It was a dreadful fight, however.
Furthermore, Fury is no Usyk. The proud 39-year-old, unlike Fury, has never once entered a contest ill-equipped for battle. He will have trained with the same intensity he employed ahead of beating Fury twice, Joshua twice, and Dubois twice. There will be the determination that was evident during his time at cruiserweight when he completely cleaned out the division. For him, at least, Verhoeven will be deemed a threat. Do not expect any complacency whatsoever.
Verhoeven, too, will come with belief. The Dutch 37-year-old is used to having things his own way in kickboxing, a discipline in which he has not lost since 2015. That sort of dominance quite naturally breeds confidence. Yet it is worthwhile to note that of the 64 kickboxing bouts recorded on BoxRec, Verhoeven scored stoppages in only 16 of them. A glance at his highlight reel on YouTube shows that most of those stoppages were triggered by him being so adept at kicking. Without the option to trip Usyk, or aim his boot at the champion’s jaw, one genuinely struggles to envision any kind of scenario in which the massive underdog is competitive.
He is surely tough, however. Trained by Peter Fury, Verhoeven might well be able to stand up to Usyk’s blows for a period. But there will come a point in the contest, probably around the halfway mark of this 12-rounder, when the psychological strength required to stay both focused and out of the way will start to wane.
Usyk’s mental dexterity, alongside his freakish skillset, will soon tie Verhoeven in knots and the fight, such as it was, will be all over.
To expect anything less from Usyk, frankly, would be an insult.
