Usyk would have narrowly gone in front on the scorecards with a 10-8 round in the 11th, leaving the fight finely balanced in the final round.<\/p>\n
While many disagreed with the time of the stoppage, not everyone agreed letting Verhoeven continue would have seen him win on points.<\/p>\n
Four-weight world champion Shakur Stevenson said the referee “robbed” the public of a definitive ending to the fight.<\/p>\n
“Usyk turned it on when he needed. The referee helped for sure but who’s to say Usyk wasn’t [going to] get him out of there, he had plenty time,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Bad night in the office, don’t look like [Usyk] was in tip-top shape to me.”<\/p>\n
Tony Bellew was knocked out by Usyk in their cruiserweight world title fight in 2018 and said he had never seen the Ukrainian “out-worked” before in his career.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think Rico would have been ready to career on in the 12th. He was done, he was spent. But a massive part of that is down to experience,” Bellew said.<\/p>\n
“We probably should do it again.”<\/p>\n
Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, Richie Woodhall said there would be “questions asked” about the referee’s decision but called for a rematch to settle the matter.<\/p>\n
Verhoeven welcomed a rematch and said he intended to continue boxing, whether he fought Usyk again or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Usyk would have narrowly gone in front on the scorecards with a 10-8 round in the 11th, leaving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-603500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}