{"id":627476,"date":"2026-06-08T12:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T12:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/627476\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T12:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T12:18:08","slug":"rico-verhoeven-sums-up-oleksandr-usyks-boxing-ability-as-he-targets-rematch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/627476\/","title":{"rendered":"Rico Verhoeven sums up Oleksandr Usyk’s boxing ability as he targets rematch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, Rico Verhoeven came agonisingly close to shocking the world and becoming the most inexperienced world champion in boxing history. Upon reflection, Verhoeven has assessed the skills of heavyweight ruler, Oleksandr Usyk<\/a>, whom he almost dethroned.<\/p>\n

Verhoeven boasted just the solitary professional bout ahead of last month\u2019s challenge for Usyk\u2019s WBC crown, with that bout coming all the way back in 2014, prior to Verhoeven becoming a legend in the sport of kickboxing.<\/p>\n

As a result, if able to pull off an unbelievable upset, Verhoeven would have trumped the efforts of Saensak Muangsurin and Vasyl Lomachenko, who each claimed world honours in their third professional bouts<\/a>, to become the first male boxer to pick up a world title within two contests.<\/p>\n

In the fight, Verhoeven came extremely close, with his efforts believed by many fans to have warranted a clear lead on the scorecards<\/a>, until he was controversially halted in round 11.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Recalling that night in an interview with Ring Magazine<\/a>, Verhoeven recognised that Usyk is \u2018an amazing fighter\u2019, but declared that he \u2018did not show him anything that he had not seen before\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy trainer [Peter Fury] told me before, \u2018he is not going to show you something that you haven\u2019t seen before\u2019 \u2013 and he was correct, because he is an amazing fighter, he is a super accomplished fighter, but he didn\u2019t show me something that I didn\u2019t see before.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew that he was going to be smart, agile and fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continuing, Verhoeven remained hopeful of securing a second shot at Usyk\u2019s belts, with Turki Al-Alshikh having confirmed his interest in staging a second showdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis Excellency told me that he wants to see the rematch because he was like, \u2018you were ahead, you were winning and then this happens and the referee jumps in, it doesn\u2019t make any sense!\u2019. So, let\u2019s see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite Verhoeven\u2019s aspirations to challenge once more, Usyk could instead take on undefeated German, Agit Kabayel, in his next outing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last month, Rico Verhoeven came agonisingly close to shocking the world and becoming the most inexperienced world champion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-627476","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\/627476","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=627476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}