Jason Statham, Oleksandr Usyk-Rico Verhoeven and a real fight

You might have come for the Pyramids but you left talking about the fight – and the controversy

Apparently, it was all Jason Statham’s idea.

He is the reason why, at about 12.30am this morning, I scrambled to rewrite the intro for my post-fight recap and scrawled: “The world heavyweight champion is 2-0, 37 years old, and has had one boxing match in 12 years having spent most of his adult life as a kickboxer.”

It seemed as though Rico Verhoeven was on the brink of a seismic shock – until he wasn’t.

Nailed by a right uppercut, the courageous challenger was dropped by the usually brilliant but surprisingly out-of-sorts Oleksandr Usyk.

He made it back to his feet but lost his mouthpiece.

The fight was allowed to go on but as Usyk piled in to finish his opponent, referee Mark Lyson made the call to stop the fight.

It was madness. The whole thing. From start to finish, from cradle to grave.

Lyson can’t really be blamed. He had a split second and made his call.

It was brave. It was probably wrong. It was instinctive. He gets no replay. He can’t listen back to hear the bell among the din of the crowd. He had no stop clock telling him there was one second left in the 11^th round.

He was also a damn sight closer to Rico than you or I, and for all those clamouring for a 12th round, many are saying: “He [Rico] would have been stopped in the next.”

Well, that doesn’t do him much good. It just gives us the definitive answers we can say we are without today.

But there is something that is definitive, and that is we need to be, collectively, over these crossover fights.

It was Statham who apparently planted the idea of Usyk-Rico into the mind of Saudi boxing powerbroker Turki Alalshikh. He likely didn’t need much encouragement, given his first big event in the Middle East saw Tyson Fury fight Francis Ngannou.

So we’ve seen these curiosities before. In fact, it’s been on an annoying loop for a while.

The only boxing winner out of it ever is the fighter who actually irons out his opponent; anything else is abject failure.

Points, a decision, a crisis — anything less than annihilation is not acceptable. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Anthony Joshua smashing Francis Ngannou is what we’d like to think would or should happen every time, only it hasn’t and doesn’t.

In part, that desire is born out of the respect those in the industry have for their sport and the people in it. But it also comes from an ingrained snobbery from those who find it hard to understand that plenty of boxers have started fighting late and been success stories — and that’s not to mention those, like Rico, who have fought before.

But it was ridiculous that it was sanctioned for the world heavyweight title and that the WBC saw fit to approve Verhoeven.

With the sanctioning bodies battling for relevance — the same way a dinosaur might have pulled up a chair to enjoy the sight of a giant rock flying at the earth — the WBC decided that Verhoeven’s one boxing match against a guy who was 0-5 qualified him for a shot.

Let’s not even talk about the fighters he leapt over in the queue.

(Pictures by Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing)

Now, as the dust settles, you are faced with where do you rank Verhoeven, who did better against Usyk than Daniel Dubois did twice?

He was level on two scorecards and a head on the third. I had him winning, but did think the end was nigh.

Still, what Jason Statham wants, Jason Statham gets.

He is, by the way, a Hollywood actor and a former professional diver.

But, alas, he also has the ear of influential people and he will doubtless be thrilled that his brainchild is today the talk of the sporting world.

He was all in. Others, myself included, were far more reluctant.

But as the rounds went by, you couldn’t deny what you were seeing: a real, even fight. Usyk never looked panicked but he looked constantly uncertain.

There were ironic cheers with Rico’s early punches landed as those ringside celebrated what they deemed to be beginner’s luck. He cracked Usyk with an early right hand to the face and a bigger shot with the same hand to the stomach.

Usyk had previously solved the riddles before him each and every time. He listened to the tunes, figured out the cadence, and then made his opponent dance to his beat.

He was the matrix others couldn’t fathom. Instead, last night, it was Usyk who struggled to adjust as Verhoeven bulled forward, swamping him with his size, pressure and power.

Verhoeven, the much bigger man, changed the pace of his attack, worked the body, was busy with his jab — which he often doubled up — maintained a crab-like defence, and often submerged Usyk with his unexpected volume, work rate and tenacity.

Verhoeven’s naïve recklessness and enthusiasm gave him his best chance but, ultimately, it’s what cost him so dearly.

Trainer Peter Fury sensed his man was spent when the end came.

Rightly proud of his fighter, Fury said afterwards: “He got tired in there. Experience let him down a bit. He didn’t know how to pace the fight that well. He didn’t know when to grab hold, get a second wind, go again — he was constantly on him [Usyk] and he basically burned himself out.”

As with other Statham blockbusters, there could be a sequel.

There were tasteless scenes in the ring following the contest when, after Usyk had referenced the struggles many in Ukraine face, including his own family, he was presented with Agit Kabayel as his next opponent. Then a Verhoeven rematch was mooted, and Usyk kind of rolled his eyes at having to beat another man twice to please everyone.

The desire to push what’s next completely destroyed the moment to assess what had just happened.

The problem is, when you script things to the letter there is no margin for improv. The script is the script. And the script said that Kabayel should hop into the ring and call out Usyk, but there was a room to read and no one did.

That script, such as it was, had been torn up rounds earlier. It had been made gloriously redundant and should have been abandoned then — like these crossover fights should have been scrapped by now. This is not Hollywood. This is live sport.

And it should have been the 27-0 Kabayel in there last night, not the queue-jumping Dutchman, because of a celebrity’s whim.

Sure, Verhoeven showed he belonged, but that doesn’t make it right.

Still, so controversial was the ending – and there were so many talking points – that at least, finally, people were no longer talking about the one thing they’d insisted on discussing all week: the Pyramids. Turned out a fight is a fight regardless of where you stage it.