Rico Verhoeven spends some time talking to DAZN about his upcoming fight against Oleksandr Usyk on May 23. During the conversation Verhoeven breaks down his thoughts on the fight, how it came together, the opportunity it presents and more. Check out some excerpts of what he had to say below.<\/p>\n
Verhoeven on whether he has no pressure going against Usyk<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, the pressure is always there but I think the most important thing is enjoy the process instead of enjoying just the fight, or enjoying \u2018when I achieve this, I\u2019m going to feel like that.\u2019 I just try to keep it level and try to be crazy excited and thankful.\u201d<\/p>\n
On those who believe he has no chance to beat Usyk<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand that people think that, and I think it\u2019s up to me to give them some context because they\u2019re boxing fans. Most of them probably don\u2019t follow kickboxing or don\u2019t know the sport of kickboxing, so they have no clue who Rico is. And I\u2019ve been dominating the heavyweight kickboxing sport for over a decade. I\u2019m used to the big lights, big stage, the interviews, the pressure. I\u2019ve been having a target on my back for such a long time because I have what people wanted. For me, I feel like a fish in the water here.\u201d<\/p>\n
On going straight to the top of the heavyweight division in boxing<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, to be honest, it made sense. The other fights [against Francis Ngannou or Anthony Joshua] also made sense in a way because they were also considered big crossover events. Yeah, Oleksandr Usyk, who\u2019s been dominating the sport for such a long time from the cruiserweight, now in the heavyweight\u2026Undisputed versus undisputed. Two different worlds collide with each other. Wow. I think it\u2019s a crazy movie script.\u201d<\/p>\n
On how hard he expects the transition to boxing will be<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been kickboxing since the age of six, and I\u2019ve been focusing on my boxing withing kickboxing \u2014 I\u2019ve been working with Team Fury since like 2010 or 11 \u2014 and I\u2019ve sparred everybody, sparred Kabayel, sparred Dillian Whyte, sparred Hughie Fury, sparred Tyson Fury. I\u2019ve sparred everybody. So I\u2019m used to keeping my legs on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rico Verhoeven spends some time talking to DAZN about his upcoming fight against Oleksandr Usyk on May 23.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,1920,85],"class_list":["post-668517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}