Boxing heavyweight champ Usyk pushed to the limit by a kickboxer

Oleksandr Usyk won a hotly contested heavyweight title clash with Rico Verhoeven on Saturday at the Pyramids of Giza with a knockout in the 11th round. But it feels like he lost.

Despite what the judges' scorecards said, Usyk lost most of the rounds in the fight as he was inexplicably passive for a champion fighting against a man in Verhoeven who was boxing in only his second professional fight ever.

During the fight, I assumed his inactivity was due to feeling Verhoeven's power in the first round, but who knows. He was unusually sluggish throughout most of the fight, not mixing it up or coming forward from his southpaw stance like we have been used to seeing.

But in retrospect, that explanation doesn't make much sense. He has been in the ring with big punchers before, boxers who have way more experience and way more punching power than Verhoeven.

So now I don't know what caused Usyk to lay that egg, but he left the boxing world with more questions than answers with his performance.

Rico Verhoeven employs an awkward fighting style. The Dutch former kickboxing heavyweight champion constantly bobbed his head up and down to avoid Usyk's southpaw lead hand, which the latter usually uses masterfully to control his opponents.

Verhoeven took advantage of Usyk's lack of urgency by winning much of the first half of the fight. While he never had Usyk in any real trouble, Verhoeven was scoring plenty against his more seasoned opponent.

Based on the judges scorecards (two of which had the fight even when it was stopped and one of which had Verhoeven up by one round) Usyk was never in as much danger of losing as it seemed, because of his lack of activity and aggression.

Saturday night was the complete opposite of the Usyk boxing fans have come to know and revere, and yet still, Usyk was able to get the job done, with the help of one overeager referee.

Rico Verhoeven loses championship bid on controversial stoppage

Rico Verhoeven was on the cusp of the biggest upset in modern boxing history heading into the 11th round. Even with two of the judges scorecards having him even and one having him ahead, the 11th and 12th, the championship rounds, were shaping up to be epic.

We're talking Mike Tyson vs Buster Douglas epic. Lennox Lewis vs Hasim Rahman epic. Anthony Joshua vs Andy Ruiz epic.

Those are three of the biggest heavyweight upsets in the last nearly 40 years, and Saturday night, boxing fans were perhaps on the cusp of witnessing history when referee Mark Lyson decided to leave his fingerprints on the match.

Verhoeven was winning the 11th round when he literally got too far ahead of his skis and decided to throw wildly and blindly to try to knock Usyk out after hurting him with a punch late in the round.

But when you are throwing looping shots blindly at an experienced pro like Usyk, you are just begging to get countered, and that's exactly what Usyk did. A counter right uppercut stopped a charging Verhoeven dead in his tracks.

A wobbly Verhoeven beat the count while he lost his mouthpiece (maybe he even spit it out to buy himself some extra time) as the 11th round clicked to under 10 seconds. With no more than 5 seconds left in the round, Usyk pounced on his opponent, and after Verhoeven blocked a couple of punches, Mark Lyons inexplicably called off the fight.

Between spitting out the mouthpiece and the ref perhaps calling off the fight early, the ending to Usyk vs Rico was like a bizarro-world Tyson vs Douglas, except this time the champion benefited from the quick ending and controversial stoppage.

Verhoeven was literally seconds from surviving the round before the referee decided to put a stop to the fight. Verhoeven is reportedly appealing the stoppage, but between the bogus scorecards, the referee´s bias, and the fact that Usyk is still one of the faces of boxing, I wouldn't hold my breath if I were him.

Despite the loss, Verhoeven was a big winner last night, surprising the boxing world by pushing its heavyweight champion to the absolute limit. And while Usyk gets to keep his belts and unblemished record, for the first time in his career, it feels like he lost. But fans who were robbed of seeing either the biggest upset ever or one of the greatest come-from-behind victories ever were the biggest losers.

Related: Oleksandr Usyk's latest comments put superfight in doubt

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This story was originally published May 26, 2026 at 5:12 AM.