Oleksandr Usyk spent some time talking to Ring Magazine about this weekend\u2019s historic fight against kickboxing champion Rico Verhoeven in front of the Egyptian pyramids, and his thoughts about performing in front of one of the seven wonders of the world. Check out some of what he had to say below.<\/p>\n
Usyk on facing off with Rico in front of the pyramids<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is piece of work. I\u2019m happy to be here because it\u2019s my first time in Egypt, and I\u2019m very happy to look at pyramid because wow, it\u2019s a big story.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the importance of enjoying this moment as his career comes to a close<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we all must look at what we do because its will not [be] long \u2014 one year, maybe, one-and-a-half, and then I say \u2018stop\u2019 and go work and maybe movie, maybe businesses. Political? No, because I don\u2019t like. Maybe I will coach [boxing]. Maybe. I like this. \u2018Hey, time! Work!\u2019\u201c<\/p>\n
On the facing a kickboxer in a boxing match<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was young, when Floyd Mayweather prepare fight with McGregor, I think \u2018yeah, it\u2019s bullsh-t. Why? Why? Why?!\u2019 Now, after fight maybe one year ago I think \u2018listen, this is good because two sports combine.\u2019 It\u2019s all famous people, but boxing, UFC, kickboxing, it\u2019s big place [for fans to come together]. It\u2019s very popular because people have choice, you can go boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, judo, any way.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think like this: you must live happy. You must do what you want, but not bad. If you want, help people\u2026Listen, you have one life, you have to live everyday as happy. This happy time.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the pressure of defending his titles<\/p>\n
\u201cBrother, I not feel pressure because I\u2019m training. I\u2019m not thinking about this. For me, it\u2019s important my training camp and fight. I like belts, I like all my belts \u2014 thank you, organization \u2014 but for me, my road is the fights.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oleksandr Usyk spent some time talking to Ring Magazine about this weekend\u2019s historic fight against kickboxing champion Rico…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,1920,85],"class_list":["post-683612","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\/683612","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=683612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}