When Rico Verhoeven vacated his GLORY heavyweight title and left the kickboxing promotion in free agency, he didn’t have to wait long for the offers to start piling up.
Going undefeated for over a decade with a multitude of title defenses immediately made Verhoeven a hot commodity, which is why the UFC openly pursued him after he expressed an interest in possibly transitioning to MMA. Verhoeven has spent years training alongside UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall so it was easy to see why the UFC wanted to retain his services.
But ultimately, Verhoeven passed on the UFC’s offer and instead he opted for a move into boxing where he was first in talks for a fight against Anthony Joshua before eventually inking a deal to take on Oleksandr Usyk, who is the No. 1 heavyweight in the sport.
“It’s been one hell of a ride, I can tell you that,” Verhoeven told MMA Fighting. “I really felt like my GLORY contract was coming to an end and I was like we did it all. Kickboxing, it was just played out. From there on, we just started looking around and seeing what other opportunities were there. We were looking at UFC, we were looking at a big crossover in boxing and both options were on the table. The boxing opportunity looked more interesting so that’s the road we took.”
Verhoeven was excited about potentially facing Joshua but the British heavyweight endured a personal tragedy when he was involved in a car accident in Nigeria where two of his friends were killed.
That obviously nixed Joshua coming back any time soon and Verhoeven decided to pivot to a new opponent when he pitched the idea for the Usyk fight.
“I was in Spain for training camp for that specific fight,” Verhoeven explained. “I just continued camp, came back to the gym, discussed with the team like ‘yo guys, this is the update, what can we do?’ Maybe we could fight somebody else? But who? Who do we want to fight? I don’t know and then my trainer Peter Fury said ‘what about Oleksandr Usyk?’ Yeah, why not? I think it’s a great idea. It makes sense. Undisputed kickboxer against undisputed boxer. I think there’s a story there. So we discussed it, we loved the idea and I said let me talk to them, present it and let them know I have an idea.
“I just hear ‘I love it.’ Yes! Let me talk to Usyk and let’s go from there. I think a week and a half goes by, calls me back, ‘I talked to him, he said he’s down for it, he loves it as well.’ What? OK, let’s go! The rest is history.”
Ranked at the top of the heavyweight division, Usyk holds a perfect 24-0 record with notable wins over Joshua, Daniel Dubois and Tyson Fury. Despite giving up size to virtually every opponent he faces, Usyk’s technical skill has made him one of the toughest matchups in the entire sport of boxing.
It’s a dauting task to face the best heavyweight in the sport in only your second professional boxing match (his first came with a knockout win back in 2014) but Verhoeven was up for the challenge.
“I love it,” Verhoeven said. “The bigger the challenge, the better. For me, I don’t feel like I have to defend myself. The thing is people do not know the story. They don’t know who I am. They don’t know my back story. I’ve been with the Fury’s for over 15 years already. How could they know? It is always so easy because everything and everyone gets put into boxes. My box is the kickboxing box. Rico, that’s your box. You’ve been a champion, you did that amazing but stay in that box. Why? I like to think outside of the box.
“I like to box. I like MMA. I like acting. I like to try stuff. Sometimes you try something and you’re like nah, that wasn’t for me. But at least I tried. With this, I’ve been boxing for such a long time. For me, it just made sense and then fighting right away for the WBC world championship, makes it even bigger and even better.”
Because he was so dominant during his kickboxing career, Verhoeven was almost always a massive favorite in most of his fights, especially in the last few years he spent competing in GLORY.
For the first time in a long while, the 37-year-old fighter is now a decided underdog going up against Usyk but he actually loves that role.
Verhoeven strangely loves that he’s being counted out already as if he has no chance to pull off the upset.
“The target has been on my back as long as I can remember,” Verhoeven said. “The target is not on my back this time. I can cause for an upset. I can cause for a surprise.
“I’m going to bring something to the table that he hasn’t seen before. I’m going to move and I’m going to do things and I’m going to attack in a certain way that boxers just simply don’t do.”
As far as the future goes, Verhoeven isn’t thinking past Saturday when he faces Usyk in Egypt but he still sees a lot of opportunities awaiting him but becoming a champion in only his second boxing match is all he can think about right now.
“I’m jumping into this and I’m giving it everything that I have got,” Verhoeven said. “It’s going to be one hell of a fight. I’m ready to shock the world. I think it’s time to find out who is the baddest man on the planet. So after I beat Oleksandr Usyk, let’s see who’s next. Because I’m ready to find out.”
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