Usyk vs Verhoeven: Not the Crossover You Think
Oleksandr Usyk will defend his undisputed heavyweight crown against Rico Verhoeven. This fight has been framed as a fight between an undisputed champion and a crossover novelty, but upon closer inspection, it reveals something more complex. Rico Verhoeven is not a kickboxer dabbling in boxing; he is a kickboxer who has quietly been training in boxing for ten years.
The Resume on Paper
Verhoeven’s kickboxing record stands at 66-10, with 21 wins by KO and an active 22-fight win streak. He held the Glory Heavyweight Championship for over eleven years, making thirteen title defenses. His record-extending twelfth defense came against Levi Rigters at Collision 7 in Arnhem in December 2024. In addition to his kickboxing career, Verhoeven is also a professional MMA fighter with one win under his belt.
He won Glory’s Fighter of the Year award the year after that.
The Peter Fury Years
Verhoeven didn’t start training in boxing to chase a payday; he has been working with Peter Fury, Tyson Fury’s uncle and longtime trainer, for more than a decade. He sparring with Tyson Fury over ten years ago when Tyson was the lineal heavyweight champion. According to recent reports, Verhoeven has been training with Fury’s camp to develop his boxing skills, which he has been doing quietly for years.
The focus of Verhoeven’s training has been peeling his stance lower and more bladed, replacing his kickboxing stance with a boxer’s compact one. His footwork has been retooled to take low kicks out of consideration entirely, and his head movement built up to avoid taking damage from kicks.
Boxing Versus Kickboxing – The Real Difference
The Ring this spring, Verhoeven discussed the differences between boxing and kickboxing. He believes that the harder transition is for a boxer to become a kickboxer because they must learn to absorb leg damage, fight from broader range, and survive five three-minute rounds of unbroken pressure. In contrast, he thinks that a kickboxer becoming a boxer must learn pacing for twelve rounds and “flow” through emotional fluctuations they never had time for in a Glory fight.
Verhoeven also admitted that the Usyk camp humbled him on the boxing-specific gaps he needs to address before facing Usyk. This doesn’t contradict what he said earlier: both are true at once — Verhoeven knows the boxing fundamentals better than many give him credit for, but he also acknowledges the significant gap between those fundamentals and what Oleksandr Usyk does.
What This Actually Is
This isn’t just any fight — this is for the WBC, WBA, IBF, and Ring heavyweight titles. The WBC has commissioned a one-off ceremonial belt — the “King of the Nile” — for the winner. The card will stream on DAZN pay-per-view. The Pyramids will be lit.
None of this changes the fact that what is on the floor in the ring is: does Rico Verhoeven’s decade-long training in boxing count for anything at the highest level?
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Event: Oleksandr Usyk vs. Rico Verhoeven
Date: Saturday, May 23, 2026
Location: Pyramids in Giza, Egypt
Start Time: DAZN PPV main card start at 1 p.m. ET
