Verhoeven has never been one.
Oleksandr Usyk will defend his heavyweight titles in front of the Pyramids of Giza Saturday evening. The visual is extraordinary. The competitive question in the main event is not. Rico Verhoeven is the greatest heavyweight kickboxer alive — a legitimate combat sports icon with a 66–10 kickboxing record and a decade holding the GLORY championship. He is also 1–0 as a professional boxer with a second-round knockout in 2014. This fight is promotional theater at the highest level of the sport. That is not a criticism. It is what it is.
The fights underneath it are where the actual competitive drama lives. Jack Catterall has been trying to become a world champion since he was controversially robbed against Josh Taylor in 2022. He gets his shot Friday at welterweight. Shakhram Giyasov has been waiting for his mandatory title shot since before his daughter was born — and fighting for her memory now that she's gone. Hamzah Sheeraz needs a world title win and a convincing stoppage to reclaim the narrative after the Adames draw. Frank Sanchez and Richard Torrez Jr. are fighting an IBF heavyweight eliminator with real divisional stakes.
The pyramids are 4,600 years old. The fights are happening now.
Ukraine. 37 years old. 24–0 with 15 knockouts. Won the 2012 Olympic gold medal at light heavyweight. Won every cruiserweight title there was — undisputed. Moved up to heavyweight and became undisputed champion there too. His last fight was a fifth-round knockout of Daniel Dubois at Wembley Stadium in July 2025. He has defeated Joshua (twice), Fury, and Dubois. He is P4P #2 on this publication's list. He is defending his WBC, WBA, and IBF titles Saturday — the Ring Magazine belt is not on the line, but he holds that too. At 37, Usyk shows no meaningful physical decline. His hand speed, footwork, and punch selection remain elite. He is the standard every heavyweight is measured against.
Netherlands. 37 years old. 66–10 kickboxing record. Has held the GLORY heavyweight championship for more than a decade. Unbeaten in combat sports since 2015. His professional boxing record is 1–0: a second-round knockout of Janos Finfera in 2014 — 12 years ago. He is 6'5" and approximately 270 pounds. He trains under Peter Fury, uncle of Tyson. He has appeared in multiple action films, most recently Roadhouse II. His combat sports conditioning is elite. His boxing credentials are not. He has never absorbed a world-class combination in a professional boxing ring from a fighter who could hurt him. That distinction matters enormously at this level.
That photo is a real combat sports champion celebrating a real victory. It is also from a different sport. Saturday tests whether elite kickboxing conditioning travels into a 12-round boxing match against the most precise heavyweight in modern history.
The result is not in question. Usyk wins. The question is when, and what it looks like getting there. Verhoeven is 270 pounds with more than two decades of elite combat sports conditioning. His body can absorb punishment in ways a lighter man's cannot. He has never been in a boxing ring against someone who can hurt him — which means his reaction to Usyk's precision combinations is genuinely unknown. Does he go down in round four? Does he survive on sheer mass through round eight? Does his kickboxing experience give him timing advantages in the early rounds that briefly trouble Usyk?
The other dimension: Usyk is 37 and this fight does not demand everything he has. He will be methodical. He will work the body. He will not take chances against a man with a 270-pound right hand. That means the stoppage may come later than the crowd wants — and it should, because Usyk isn't going to rush into an untested opponent's biggest weapon to give the audience a quick finish.
Sheeraz (22–0–1) · Begic (29–0–1)
Hamzah Sheeraz is 26 years old, 6'3" with a 75-inch reach, and has 18 knockouts in 22 professional fights. He drew with Carlos Adames in a disputed split decision for the WBC middleweight title, then stopped Edgar Berlanga in round five in July 2025 to rebuild momentum. He is fighting for his first world title Friday. He carries a fine amateur career and 103 rounds of professional experience.
Alem Begic is 39, based in Munich, and has 23 knockouts and one draw across 30 professional fights. His amateur career started in 2004 and included bouts against 2012 London Olympian Enrico Köllig. He won the WBO European super middleweight title. He has never been stopped professionally. Not once. Thirty fights, no stoppage loss.
That last fact is the entire analytical tension. Sheeraz's reputation requires a knockout — the Adames draw damaged his standing, and a 12-round decision win over a 39-year-old on an Egyptian pay-per-view undercard doesn't rebuild it. He needs the KO. The Adames fight revealed his tendency to go tentative in the middle rounds — his corner screamed at him in round nine that he needed a knockout. He couldn't produce it. Begic is six years older than Adames and less physically imposing, but he has survived everything professional boxing has thrown at him for 30 fights.
Catterall (32–2) · Giyasov (17–0)
Jack Catterall is from Chorley, Lancashire. He compiled a 48–18 amateur record, won the CYP National title, finished second in the ABAE Junior Championships, and boxed internationally for England twice. He turned professional in 2012, was robbed in a world title fight against Josh Taylor in 2022, won the British and WBO European titles, beat Regis Prograis in 2024, stopped Ekow Essuman in round 11 in November 2025, and is now at welterweight after years of difficult cuts at 140. He is training under Bozy Ennis — Jaron Ennis's father — in Philadelphia. He has 248 professional rounds. He said this fight "came out of the blue." He wasn't aware of Giyasov until the fight was announced.
Shakhram Giyasov won a silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics as a welterweight — the exact division he's fighting at Friday. He is 17–0, 32 years old, has faced six southpaws professionally, and has been ranked WBA #1 for years without getting the mandatory shot he earned. He has 95 professional rounds. He stopped Ocampo in April 2025 and has been inactive for 13 months since.
Catterall's southpaw style is specifically constructed to make orthodox power punchers look awkward. Giyasov is an orthodox power puncher with 61% professional KO rate. The stylistic mismatch favors Catterall. So does the experience edge — 248 rounds to 95. The short notice and Giyasov's 13 months of inactivity cut the other way. The Olympic welterweight foundation at his natural weight class also cuts the other way. This is a closer fight than the surface reading suggests.
Sanchez (25–1) · Torrez Jr. (14–0)
Frank Sanchez is Cuban, 33 years old, 25–1 with 18 knockouts. He stands 6'4" with a 78-inch reach. He has 120 professional rounds across his career. His one loss is a seventh-round knockout against Agit Kabayel in May 2024 — and Kabayel subsequently contended for the WBC heavyweight title. Sanchez rebuilt with two wins, had this fight originally scheduled for March 28 on a PBC card before postponing due to injury, and has since been in a five-month training camp. He is a classic Cuban technician: jab-first, lateral movement, controls distance with his height, fights the fight at the range he chooses.
Richard Torrez Jr. won a 2020 Olympic silver medal at super heavyweight. He is 26, from Tulare, California, 14–0 with 12 knockouts. He is a southpaw pressure fighter who works inside and lands compact power shots from difficult angles. 12 of his 14 professional wins have come by knockout. He has never been past round eight professionally. This fight is scheduled for 10 rounds.
The public narrative favors Torrez — young, unbeaten, Olympic silver, southpaw power. The film room asks a different question: what happens to a pressure fighter with 44 professional rounds when a Cuban technician with 120 rounds takes him into territory he has never been in? Rounds nine and ten are Sanchez's domain. Torrez's timing, aggression, and conditioning at that stage are genuinely unknown. Sanchez was knocked out by Kabayel, yes — but Kabayel is a pressure fighter who breaks opponents down over distance. Torrez applies the same style. The difference is that Kabayel had 100-plus rounds of professional experience and Torrez does not.