Rico Verhoeven is upping the ante on his challenge to Francis Ngannou. He doesn’t want to fight “The Predator” once, he wants to fight him three times across three combat sports.
The Glory kickboxing heavyweight champion has been pushing for a fight with Ngannou for nearly a year, and now believes he’s figured out a way to make their rivalry one of the most exciting things in fighting right now.
“Let’s think outside the box, what hasn’t been done before?” Verhoeven said on a recent Ariel Helwani show. “The ultimate challenge: one opponent, three fights, three disciplines.
Verhoeven’s idea is to fight Ngannou three times, each fight in a different sport: mixed martial arts, kickboxing, and boxing.
“I’ve done three fights in one night, but to make it good, to make it exciting, and make it like a full camp, it’s important to have three different moments … We got the right opponent … We gotta find the right organization, the right person to organize it and make it happen.”
Verhoeven insists there’s interest from promoters in all three sports.
“Glory’s interested. [PFL], I think so. And Saudi’s interested. So I think there’s a lot of things that might happen and just change combat sports in general. We’re driving in a car, and you’re driving on the highway. Why pick a lane? Why pick one lane when you can own the whole highway? You can do all three. Why not? Let’s just do all three.”
Ngannou hasn’t fought since an October 2024 win over Renan Ferreira in MMA. Before that, he lost his two debut boxing matches to Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua. The Fury fight was shockingly close … the Joshua fight not so much — a second round knockout in favor of “AJ.”
Currently it seems like Saudi boxing power broker Turki Alalshikh is contemplating a Francis Ngannou vs. Deontay Wilder fight. Wilder just won a tune up last weekend against Tyrrell Anthony Herndon via 7th round TKO (watch it here), but the performance wasn’t the sort that makes you think he’s ready for a return to top level competition. That could play in Ngannou’s favor, or could make Alalshikh pass on the fight entirely.
Either way, Verhoeven is ready to go.
“If somebody says, ‘Yo, I want this and I want this real fast,’ let’s go,” he said. “I’m down. I’ve done it all. Let’s create moments and things that haven’t been done before.”
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
