{"id":702326,"date":"2026-05-29T14:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T14:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/702326\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T14:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T14:18:08","slug":"oleksandr-usyk-loses-rounds-to-kickboxer-rico-verhoeven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/702326\/","title":{"rendered":"Oleksandr Usyk loses rounds to kickboxer Rico Verhoeven"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnews.com\/fighter\/oleksandr-usyk\/\" class=\"internal-link text-bone underline decoration-ash\/30 hover:decoration-gold underline-offset-2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Oleksandr Usyk<\/a> lost several rounds to kickboxer <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnews.com\/fighter\/rico-verhoeven\/\" class=\"internal-link text-bone underline decoration-ash\/30 hover:decoration-gold underline-offset-2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Rico Verhoeven<\/a> on Saturday night in a bout that left observers stunned at the <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnews.com\/division\/heavyweight\/\" class=\"internal-link text-bone underline decoration-ash\/30 hover:decoration-gold underline-offset-2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">heavyweight<\/a> champion&#8217;s performance.<\/p>\n<p>Verhoeven, 37, landed clean body shots as early as the opening round, including a pair of right hands to Usyk&#8217;s midsection that shifted the momentum. Boxing Scene columnist Thomas Hauser described watching the second right hand connect and feeling his &#8220;eyebrows were a few centimetres higher than usual&#8221; as he realised what was unfolding.<\/p>\n<p>How Verhoeven troubled the unified champion<\/p>\n<p>The kickboxer&#8217;s success against the sport&#8217;s top <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnews.com\/division\/heavyweight\/\" class=\"internal-link text-bone underline decoration-ash\/30 hover:decoration-gold underline-offset-2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">heavyweight<\/a> raises fresh concerns about Usyk&#8217;s current form and readiness. Verhoeven, making a crossover appearance, used his length and body attack to frustrate Usyk across multiple frames despite limited pure boxing experience at the elite level.<\/p>\n<p>Usyk, who holds the WBA, WBO, and WBC titles after victories over <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnews.com\/fighter\/tyson-fury\/\" class=\"internal-link text-bone underline decoration-ash\/30 hover:decoration-gold underline-offset-2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tyson Fury<\/a>, has not announced his next opponent. The Ukrainian champion turns 38 in January and has hinted at retirement following his rematch win over Fury in December.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-source\">Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.boxingscene.com\/articles\/the-beltline-kickboxer-rico-verhoeven-becomes-the-poster-boy-for-boxings-wtf-era\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">boxingscene.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oleksandr Usyk lost several rounds to kickboxer Rico Verhoeven on Saturday night in a bout that left observers&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-702326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702326","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=702326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}