Carl Froch has a strong opinion on Oleksandr Usyk‘s next fight with Rico Verhoeven.
Usyk has not fought since he stopped Daniel Dubois for a second time late last summer. That win completed a superb run of six fights at heavyweight that also saw him beat Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury twice each on his way to collecting all of the belts and becoming the first-ever two-time undisputed champion.
Rather than face his mandatory Fabio Wardley next, he vacated his WBO belt and will instead defend his WBC belt against Verhoeven in Egypt.
Speaking on Froch on Fighting, ‘The Cobra’ outlined he has an issue with that due to Agit Kabayel missing out on his opportunity.
“It’s a voluntary defence against someone nobody has ever heard of and he’s a kickboxer and I’m not sure how these kickboxers go into the boxing ring but I don’t think there’s many that have gone into the boxing ring and done very well in the past. All I can say about this is Oleksandr Usyk is due an easy fight and he’s got one, so fair play to him.
“Agit Kabayel will be a bit annoyed cause he’s mandatory for this WBC belt and he’s a bona fide challenger of the belt who has been around for ages waiting his turn and he’s going to have to wait even longer, which is bad for the sport really, chucking Usyk in with a kickboxer nobody’s heard of.”
Verhoeven is kickboxing’s longest ever reigning heavyweight champion, having defended his title 13 times, and is generally regarded as one of the best to ever do it, but most boxing fans would have preferred to see a battle between Usyk and mandatory challenger Kabayel.
