Usyk vs Verhoeven Punch Stats and Analysis

By Ben | Split Decision
Updated: May 24, 2026, 17:00 BST
Published: May 24, 2026, 10:00 BST

Rico Verhoeven has confirmed he will appeal his 11th-round TKO loss to Oleksandr Usyk after the fight was stopped following the round 10 bell at the Pyramids of Giza on Saturday night. 

Verhoeven, who was either drawing or ahead on all three official scorecards through ten completed rounds, told Boxing News he wants either a No Contest ruling or for the scorecards to be honoured. 

The data backs him up. Verhoeven won seven of ten rounds on power punching against Oleksandr Usyk, landed more total punches, and connected on more power shots overall. Full punch stats and scorecards below.

The kickboxing legend was in his second professional boxing fight. The result has already become one of the most controversial heavyweight stoppages in recent memory.

Verhoeven Confirms Appeal: “The Referee Should Admit His Mistake”

“They stopped the fight after the bell,” Verhoeven said. “I think we might just go and appeal it because this doesn’t make any sense. When the referee came in, I wasn’t dazzled or whatever. I was looking at the referee like ‘why are you stopping, we’re almost there’. It didn’t make any sense to me.”

He went further on what outcome he wants. “Of course mistakes can be made, but the referee should admit his mistake. Look back at it and say it’s either a No Contest, or we go to the scorecards. And if we go to the scorecards, I was ahead.”

Verhoeven’s read of the scorecards is partially correct but worth clarifying carefully, because the difference between “ahead” and “even” matters a great deal in boxing. He was ahead on one card and drawing on the other two through ten completed rounds. He was not behind on any card. Here is how the cards looked:

In boxing, when one judge has fighter A ahead and the other two have it level, the result is a majority draw. Not a win for fighter A, but not a win for fighter B either. So even taking Verhoeven’s “I was ahead” framing at its strongest, the honest read of the cards is that a clean ending to round 11 would most likely have produced a majority draw, not a Verhoeven victory.

A majority draw against the WBC heavyweight champion would still have been one of the most significant heavyweight results of the decade.

Verhoeven also welcomed a rematch and said he intended to continue boxing, whether he fought Usyk again or not. That commitment matters. It signals that this performance was not a one-off curiosity but the start of a deliberate second career, and it puts him directly into the marketplace for serious heavyweight matchups.

The Official Result

Oleksandr Usyk defeated Rico Verhoeven by technical knockout in the 11th round, with referee Mark Lyson calling a stop to the action following a sustained Usyk attack. The official record will show Usyk improving to 25-0 with 16 knockouts, and Verhoeven taking the first loss of his professional boxing career to drop to 1-1.

The result preserves Usyk’s WBC heavyweight title and his pound-for-pound number one status on most major rankings. Whether either of those positions survives a closer look at the performance is the question this article exists to address.

The Round 11 Stoppage: After the Bell

The replay shows the sequence clearly. The bell sounds ending what should have been the round. Oleksandr Usyk then throws and lands an additional punch. Referee Mark Lyson, responding to the punch rather than the bell, waves the fight off and declares a stoppage.

That is not how a boxing round ends, especially a heavyweight champion of the world fight. Punches landed after the bell do not count toward damage assessment and should not factor into a stoppage decision. A referee’s intervention in the immediate aftermath of an after-the-bell punch should, on any reasonable reading of the rules, be reviewed and most likely overturned. The WBC, whose belt was on the line, has a clear institutional interest in protecting the integrity of its title.

Oleksandr Usyk vs Rico Verhoeven CompuBox Punch Stats

The official CompuBox punch stat report is where the analysis becomes uncomfortable for Usyk. The final numbers across all 11 completed rounds:

• Usyk: 112 of 499 thrown landed (22.4%)
• Verhoeven: 113 of 508 thrown landed (22.2%)

Verhoeven landed more total punches than Usyk. He threw more, landed more, and connected at almost identical efficiency. Against the consensus pound-for-pound number one. In his second professional boxing fight.

The power punch breakdown is more striking still:

• Usyk: 89 of 263 power punches landed (33.8%)
• Verhoeven: 93 of 243 power punches landed (38.3%)

Verhoeven landed more power punches than Usyk. He landed them at a higher percentage. CompuBox themselves noted in the official report that Verhoeven landed 38% of his power shots, the third-highest power connect percentage by any Usyk opponent in his entire professional career. Only two fighters across 24 previous Usyk fights have done better.

The round-by-round picture shows where Verhoeven did his damage:

• Round 3: Verhoeven 10 landed, Usyk 9
• Round 8: Verhoeven 14 landed, Usyk 5
• Round 9: Verhoeven 16 landed at 42.1%, Usyk 8 at 21.6%
• Round 10: Verhoeven 16 landed, Usyk 13

CompuBox’s official report concluded: “Verhoeven held a 93-89 connect advantage in power punches landed, landing more power shots in 7 of 10 completed rounds.” Read that twice. Verhoeven won 7 of 10 rounds on power punching against Oleksandr Usyk.

Round 11 was Usyk’s best round of the fight by a clear margin. He landed 19 of 67 thrown at 28.4%, with 19 power punches landed of 44 thrown at 43.2%. That round alone shifted the total punch count from a clear Verhoeven lead to a narrow 113-112 advantage for Verhoeven across the fight as a whole. It was also the round in which Usyk hurt his man and got the finish.

So both readings are accurate: Usyk needed his best round to get the result, and even after that best round, the punch stats still had Verhoeven ahead overall.

What Verhoeven Did Right

The pre-fight narrative was that Verhoeven was an opportunity for Usyk. A massive, decorated kickboxer with one previous pro boxing fight to his name, walking into the ring against the most technically gifted heavyweight of his era. The bookmakers had Verhoeven at 13/1. The implied probability was around seven percent.

He performed nothing like a seven percent underdog. The data shows a fighter who used his physical advantages intelligently. He pressed forward, made Usyk work, landed his power shots, and crucially did not collapse mentally when the rounds got long. Through ten rounds he was the aggressor in a fight where most expected him to be running from the experienced boxer.

He weighed 258.7 pounds to Usyk’s career-high 233.3 pounds, a 25-pound advantage. He used that weight. The CompuBox notes describe Usyk as “sluggish” through the first ten rounds, and the punch output confirms it. Usyk threw 432 punches in the first ten rounds. Verhoeven threw 441. The bigger man set the pace.

His training under Peter Fury, with extensive sparring against Tyson Fury, clearly translated into the ring. He boxed like someone who has done it for years, not someone making his second professional appearance. The footwork was disciplined, the jab was active, and the power shots came in combination rather than as single hopeful efforts.

The frustrating part for him is that he did not get the rounds he earned. The judges had him either drawing or winning. The punch stats back that up. And the stoppage that ended the fight came on an after-the-bell punch from his opponent.

Stoppage Inconsistency: A Question for the Sport

The Verhoeven stoppage sits uncomfortably alongside recent precedent for how heavyweight fights have been allowed to continue. Fabio Wardley absorbed three rounds of heavy punishment against Daniel Dubois last month before that fight was stopped, and was given every opportunity to recover between rounds. Tyson Fury, in his first fight with Usyk in May 2024, took a standing eight count and was given clear time to clear his head before the action resumed. In both cases the referees gave the boxer in trouble the benefit of the doubt and time to make the case for continuing.

Rico Verhoeven was not given that consideration. He had not been knocked down in the rounds preceding the eleventh. He was upright when the bell sounded. He was, on every objective measure, still in a fight he was either drawing or winning. The standard applied to him was visibly different to the standard applied to other recent heavyweights in similar or worse positions, and that is a fair question for boxing’s governing bodies to answer.

Should Boxing Have a Video Review System?

This is the question the sport has been able to dodge for decades because there was no good answer. Football has VAR. Rugby has the TMO. Tennis has Hawk-Eye. Cricket has DRS. Every major sport with refereeing decisions of consequence has built some form of video review into its officiating. Boxing has not.

The Usyk vs Verhoeven sequence is exactly the kind of incident a quick review could have resolved. The bell either sounded before Usyk’s final punch, or it did not. The stoppage either came in response to legal punches in round 11, or it came in response to an after-the-bell sequence. These are binary, time-stamped, verifiable facts.

A 60-second video review by a independent fight commissioner with access to the broadcast feed could have established the truth on the night, and an immediate ruling could have either confirmed the stoppage, reversed it, or declared a No Contest.

The traditional argument against introducing review systems in boxing is that the sport’s most consequential subjective judgements – rounds scored, knockdowns vs slips, the moment a fighter is “out on his feet” – are inherently judgement calls that cannot be reduced to a video frame. That is true. But it is also a strawman. No one is suggesting reviewing every round score or every defensive crouch.

The case is for reviewing specific time-bound events that have objectively right and wrong answers: late punches, post-bell sequences, low blows, accidental headbutts, point deductions. These are the same kinds of incidents that other sports use video review for.

The WBC, to its credit, has experimented with instant replay in some title fights, particularly under Mauricio Sulaiman’s leadership. The framework exists. The barrier is institutional will and consistent adoption across sanctioning bodies, commissions and broadcasters. After Saturday night, that barrier looks indefensible.

Where Does This Leave Verhoeven’s Boxing Ranking?

The next concrete question for Rico Verhoeven is where boxing’s sanctioning bodies place him in the world rankings. He came into Saturday unranked because his sole previous pro boxing fight was a 2014 first-round win against an opponent without an established professional record. The WBA and IBF declined to sanction the title bout for that reason.

He walks out of it as a fighter who went 11 rounds with the WBC heavyweight champion in a contest he was either drawing or winning on every official card. That is a result that demands ranking recognition. The honest case is that he should sit inside the heavyweight top 10.

The WBC, whose title was on the line, has the strongest obligation to act. Historically the WBC will place a defeated title challenger inside its top 15. Where the challenger has performed creditably, the ranking can be higher. Verhoeven’s performance was significantly more than creditable.

So you would expect a top 10 ranking for Rico by the WBC. However, the implications are significant. Sanctioning Verhoeven into the rankings effectively endorses the legitimacy of his performance. Leaving him unranked, or ranking him low, would be a tacit acknowledgement that the title fight should not have been sanctioned at the level it was. That is not a position the WBC will be eager to take.

What This Means for Usyk

Usyk got the win, retained his WBC title, and remains undefeated at 25-0 with 16 knockouts. On paper, another successful defence. In reality, the most difficult night of his professional career and a performance that will dent his pound-for-pound standing rather than reinforce it.

The 233.3-pound weight, a career high, did not serve him well. CompuBox flagged him as “sluggish” through ten rounds. The size, the apparent lack of speed, the difficulty he had pulling the trigger against a bigger man with reach to spare, all of that is now part of his record.

At 39 years old, with a stated three-fight retirement plan that has Dubois next and a possible Fury trilogy after that, there will be uncomfortable questions about whether he can still deliver at the level the sport expects of him.

What’s Next for Rico Verhoeven

Verhoeven’s first move post-fight has been to confirm an appeal. Whether that succeeds with the WBC and the relevant sanctioning bodies is uncertain. Boxing rarely overturns results, even when the case is strong. But the act of formally challenging the result will keep this story alive for weeks.

A No Contest ruling, his preferred outcome, would technically remove the loss from his professional record. A successful argument for the scorecards to be honoured would convert the result into a majority draw, which would itself be a remarkable result for a kickboxer in his second pro boxing bout.

Beyond the appeal, his stated intention is to continue boxing whether he gets a rematch with Usyk or not. That positions him as a credible heavyweight contender in his own right.

Realistic matchups in the coming year include Joseph Parker, Filip Hrgovic, the winner of any next-tier eliminator, or potentially a step up into a rematch with whoever holds a heavyweight belt at that point.

He is not a circus act, not a Ngannou-style novelty whose only function is to sell pay-per-views. He can box, and the result does not change that.

The Split Decision’s Verdict

For Verhoeven, this is a loss with no shame in it. He performed beyond every reasonable expectation. The boxing world owes him a serious second look, a ranking that reflects what he just did, and the rematch he has already publicly welcomed.

For Usyk, the W is on the record. The performance is on the tape. The pound-for-pound debate, which has had him as a clear number one for two years, is suddenly more interesting than it was 24 hours ago.

Read our pre-fight preview and weigh-in coverage of Glory in Giza, or check our latest heavyweight rankings to see where both fighters now sit.

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Ben | Split Decision

Ben is the founder and editor of Split Decision, an independent boxing news site covering world title fights, British boxing, and boxing products.