{"id":692467,"date":"2026-05-25T11:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T11:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/692467\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T11:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T11:02:11","slug":"oleksandr-usyk-responds-to-controversy-over-early-stoppage-in-rico-verhoeven-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/692467\/","title":{"rendered":"Oleksandr Usyk responds to controversy over ‘early’ stoppage in Rico Verhoeven fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oleksandr Usyk<\/a> has reacted to claims that his stoppage of Rico Verhoeven, which arrived shortly after an 11th-round knockdown, was premature<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian came through a tougher-than-expected night against Verhoeven last Saturday, hardly dispatching his opponent in the manner that many had anticipated.<\/p>\n

He was, of course, an almighty pre-fight favourite against the Dutch kickboxer, who entered their heavyweight clash with only one prior professional boxing match to his name.<\/p>\n

This came in 2014, when he scored a second-round finish over a man who subsequently retired with an unremarkable record of 0-6.<\/p>\n

Usyk was therefore expected to handle Verhoeven with relative ease, only to find that he would be in for a long night at the office.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Verhoeven enjoyed considerable success in the rounds leading up to his defeat, so much so that one of the judges had it 96-94 in his favour<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The other two scoring officials, meanwhile, had reached a 95-95 verdict by the time Usyk floored his man and put the finishing touches on his 11th-round stoppage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Much of the criticism has subsequently been directed at referee Mark Lyson, who intervened at the sound of the bell after Verhoeven had risen to his feet.<\/p>\n

In response to this, though, Usyk has told Boxing King Media<\/a> that he pays little thought to the things that are largely beyond his control.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not think about this. A lot of people say, \u2018Hey, it\u2019s early\u2019. Listen, it\u2019s not my job. My job is boxing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite suffering his first defeat in a professional boxing ring, Verhoeven gave a terrific account of himself and came surprisingly close to claiming Usyk\u2019s WBC world title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oleksandr Usyk has reacted to claims that his stoppage of Rico Verhoeven, which arrived shortly after an 11th-round…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-692467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}