Rico Verhoeven lands shot at Oleksandr Usyk in Egypt bout

The World Boxing Council has cleared Rico Verhoeven to challenge Oleksandr Usyk in a heavyweight bout at the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt on May 23, 2026, and the winner will then have to meet mandatory challenger Agit Kabayel.

The sanctioning comes from the WBC Board of Governors at its 63rd Annual Convention in Bangkok, Thailand, giving the fight an official title framework even as its appeal reaches beyond conventional rankings. In the current boxing economy, that matters. Verhoeven is not being sold simply as a late-arriving novelty from kickboxing. He is being packaged as a proven headliner with enough name value, physical legitimacy and crossover interest to support a major event in one of the sport’s most theatrical settings.

Verhoeven has been competing professionally since 2005, has 76 professional kickboxing fights and went undefeated in GLORY for 11 years. The WBC says he has also headlined and sold out arenas in front of 30,000 to 40,000 spectators worldwide, a reminder that title opportunities now flow not only through records and rankings, but through proven audience reach. The sanctioning body has described him as one of the greatest heavyweight kickboxing champions, with 13 consecutive defenses behind him.

The matchup also has a celebrity pathway. A chance meeting with Jason Statham in London helped put Verhoeven on the map for the Usyk conversation, and Statham later pushed the idea again with Turki Alalshikh during fight week in Riyadh for Usyk vs. Tyson Fury, then again in Las Vegas during Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford week in September 2024. That kind of adjacency has become increasingly important in combat sports, where star power can accelerate a bout as quickly as a sanctioning route.

Verhoeven had already been circling elite boxing names. A planned fight with Anthony Joshua fell away, and Verhoeven then suggested Usyk as the next opponent on the logic of “undisputed in kickboxing versus undisputed in boxing.” Usyk enters unbeaten, with victories over Joshua twice, Fury twice and Daniel Dubois twice, and the Egyptian bout will be his first since beating Dubois in London last July. Usyk is also the only fighter in the modern era to become undisputed at cruiserweight and heavyweight.

The result is a bout that can be read two ways: a legitimate championship defense against a disciplined, battle-tested heavyweight champion from another sport, or a high-end spectacle built for global attention. In this case, boxing has chosen both.