Alistair Overeem wants Oleksandr Usyk to train him for a boxing match against Rico Verhoeven.
Overeem, 46, told All Out Fighting he visited Usyk’s camp in Valencia and would like to prepare there.
I visited his training camp in Valencia and there was good chemistry, good energy, I was learning and studying and, to me, this fires me up and motivates me. If I could do my camp at Team Usyk, it would be my pleasure.
When you are training this long, it is not only about what you are doing in the gym and punching the bag, punching the mitts and sparring. It is also about what you are doing outside of the gym, what is your life like?
He also sold the fight itself.
This is going to be the fight of the century. The biggest fight in history, ever. That is also one of our talking points, you can sell out a stadium with this, the whole of the Netherlands will be watching.
The two Dutchmen are longtime kickboxing rivals. Neither has boxed professionally, and Overeem has not competed in any discipline since testing positive for a banned substance after his October 2022 win over Badr Hari in GLORY.
Usyk’s own involvement with Verhoeven is what gives the idea a hook. He stopped the GLORY heavyweight champion in the eleventh round in May at the pyramids in Giza, in a fight he was widely seen as losing and that ended in a contested stoppage. Verhoeven has asked for a rematch, and Usyk has since vacated his titles and said he has one fight left.
Ranked heavyweights have shown little appetite for facing a kickboxer, which is part of why an Overeem fight is being discussed at all.
