JRE MMA Show #183 with Rico Verhoeven

Rico Verhoeven returned to the podcast roughly eight years after his first appearance to discuss his boxing match against undisputed heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, which Joe Rogan called one of the most remarkable things he had ever seen in combat sports and the most competitive fight of Usyk's career as heavyweight champion. Verhoeven has held the heavyweight kickboxing title for approximately a decade, entered the Usyk fight with roughly 75 kickboxing bouts but only one prior professional boxing match, and spent a dedicated six-month camp with trainer Peter Fury completely rewiring his technique from the square-on kickboxing stance to a side-on boxing stance.

The path to the fight was indirect. An Anthony Joshua bout fell apart after Joshua took the Jake Paul fight and was then involved in a fatal car accident in Africa. Verhoeven, training in Spain, proposed fighting Usyk himself, pitching it as undisputed kickboxing champion versus undisputed boxing champion. The deal was finalized after a FaceTime call lasting about a minute, with Turki Alalshikh credited as the key figure in making it happen. Two weeks before the fight Verhoeven was also offered an MMA bout against Francis Ngannou but chose the boxing match for legacy reasons, believing the Ngannou fight would remain available afterward.

His game plan was deliberately different from every other heavyweight who had faced Usyk. Rather than trying to out-box a lighter, faster, more technically refined opponent, Verhoeven pushed the pace throughout, moved left to avoid Usyk's southpaw power hand, and planned to build volume with the expectation that the first meaningful punch would land around the sixth exchange given Usyk's speed. He compared Usyk to a giant Lomachenko in terms of movement. Open scoring was used, and when trainer Peter Fury told him the cards were equal after eight rounds, Verhoeven pushed harder from the ninth onward.

Both Verhoeven and Rogan consider the stoppage deeply unjust. Verhoeven says it came after the bell, that a doctor confirmed afterward he had no concussion symptoms, and that his appeal had every point acknowledged as correct but nothing overturned. One judge had Verhoeven up by one round and others had it as a draw. Rogan said if Verhoeven had lost by decision it would have been an injustice, and characterized the stoppage as either incompetence or corruption, adding he leans toward corruption because the financial interest lies with Usyk. Verhoeven identified his own critical error as walking into an uppercut he had flagged as dangerous during preparation. Despite Turki Alalshikh entering the ring immediately after the fight to announce a rematch, no formal rematch has been arranged. Verhoeven became a free agent on a one-fight contract and has received offers from multiple major organizations, but his first preference remains the Saudi promotion because they gave him the opportunity. Rogan called a Verhoeven versus Usyk rematch the biggest fight in heavyweight boxing right now outside of Fury versus Joshua.

Verhoeven's training philosophy centers entirely on endurance. He weighs approximately 260 pounds and deliberately avoids adding excessive muscle mass, arguing more muscle requires more oxygen and burdens the cardiovascular system. His strength work consists of full-body sessions three times a week lasting 35 to 40 minutes, with sets starting at 20 repetitions and increasing to 24 using the same weight as the fight approaches and 30 seconds rest between exercises. He uses heart rate monitors and combines interval running with one-hour endurance runs, mostly on a treadmill. He also uses an anti-gravity treadmill with a balloon harness to manage joint impact following ACL surgery combined with a bucket handle meniscus tear approximately three years before the recording, from which he returned within six months.

His mother died in February during fight preparation and he did not allow himself to process the grief at the time, converting the emotional pain into fuel for training. He watched the recording of her funeral for the first time only four to five weeks before the episode was recorded and acknowledged that suppressing grief is not a healthy long-term strategy. While clearing her house he found photographs she had taken at the pyramids 30 years earlier and recreated those same photos before his fight there, comparing the experience to the Rumble in the Jungle in terms of location only.

Verhoeven attributed kickboxing's failure to break through in America largely to Glory's inability to tell fighter stories, contrasting it with the UFC's Embedded series and Countdown shows that build personal narratives and generate fan investment before fights. He described kickboxing as approximately the second most popular sport in the Netherlands, a country of 16 to 17 million people, and credited the country's small geographic size for allowing fighters from different gyms to spar easily with each other, raising the overall competitive level. He credited himself and Badr Hari with putting Dutch kickboxing on the map internationally. Rogan said he considers Verhoeven the greatest heavyweight kickboxer of all time.