Oleksandr Usyk to defend WBC heavyweight title against kickboxing legend Rico Verhoeven in May

Unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk (24-0-0, 15 KOs) has dispatched most of the top heavyweights in boxing. His next challenge will come from the world of kickboxing on May 23 when he puts his WBC heavyweight title on the line against Rico Verhoeven (1-0-0, 1 KO). The fight will take place in front of the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt and will be broadcast by DAZN. 

Usyk's last six fights have been victories over the heavyweight division's three top challengers and former champions, as he's defeated Anthony Joshua, Tyson Fury and Daniel Dubois twice each. While Fury has resumed his career after a brief retirement and seems headed for a matchup with Joshua later this year, Usyk will look outside the traditional boxing rankings for his next fight. 

Verhoeven is a kickboxing legend, with a 66-10 career record in kickboxing, he has the longest heavyweight title reign in GLORY history, defending his title 13 times and has been the top-ranked kickboxing heavyweight in the world for more than a decade. His last loss came back in 2015, and he's looking to find a new challenge in the boxing ring. 

As a boxer, Verhoeven is extremely unproven. He has one professional boxing fight under his belt, a knockout victory over a winless Janos Finfera all the way back in 2014. For all his talents as a fighter, making the move from kickboxing to boxing is already difficult, much less doing so against the No. 2 pound-for-pound boxer in the world in Usyk. 

For Usyk, this is the biggest fight he can make as he waits to see if Fabio Wardley can beat Dubois on May 9, which would move him up the heavyweight rankings into the top contender spot. Until then, Usyk needed a fight having not stepped in the ring since July 2025, and rather than go for a lower-ranked heavyweight, he opted for the intrigue of bringing Verhoeven into the boxing world.