The Dutchman has been rewarded with a second world ranking for his display in May.
It isn’t often that a fighter gets ranked higher after a fight they officially lost. After all, good performance or not, they didn’t get the win. And the vast majority of the time, the rankings will go with that alone.
The case of Rico Verhoeven, though, is different. Ahead of his challenge of unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk two weeks ago, he was not ranked by any organisation.
The reason for this is that his credentials–world-level and otherwise–were proven only in the world of kickboxing. And as a result, only Usyk’s WBC title was officially on the line.
Going in, it was obvious why not many were giving Verhoeven a chance. Despite his legendary status as a combat sportsman, he was having only his second professional boxing match against one of the best boxers in the world.
Yet had you not known that beforehand, you probably wouldn’t have been able to guess on the night. That’s because Verhoeven ended up performing far better than anyone expected against the Ukrainian.
His performance was actually so good that the majority of viewers had him comfortably ahead by the time he was controversially stopped in the 11th round. And while beforehand, the fight had been viewed as nothing more than a showcase for Usyk, post-fight talk immediately steered towards a rematch.
It is expected that before that takes place, a fight against Agit Kabayel will be next for the heavyweight titlist. However, no matter what Verhoeven does next, he will be going into it in a very good position.
That’s because the latest WBC heavyweight rankings have revealed that the Dutchman is now sitting at #8, a very lofty position for his first placement with the governing body.
This arrives after recent news that Verhoeven had been ranked #15 with the WBA, opening the door for some very big opportunities for his next ring appearance.
All of this is a testament to just how shockingly good he was that night, and it will be very interesting to see what he can turn that performance into.
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