Rico Verhoeven is the World Heavyweight Champion.
Verhoeven, dubbed ‘The Prince’ several years ago by Japanese fans, ascended the throne in the headline bout of GLORY LAST MAN STANDING at The Forum in Los Angeles, California.
Like their first meeting it was a close encounter. Little happened over the course of a strategic first two rounds; the final three had them trading back and forth before the judges were asked for their decision.
“I was feeling good and I think I was making the fight and picking up the pace so I was confident the decision was going to go my way,” Verhoeven said afterwards.
Ghita was playing an unusually restrained game, his corner calling ‘Wait! Wait Daniel!’ constantly. Afterwards Ghita revealed that the strategy had been to reduce the risk of a high-pace five-round fight by keeping his activity low for the first six minutes.
Verhoeven likes to counter-attack so Ghita’s team had their man adopt a strategy designed to give him little to work with. They wanted Ghita to draw Verhoeven out into leading the attack so Ghita could coutner.
It was a risky strategy. Ghita had some successes but nowhere near as many as would justify such a risky approach to such a high-stakes fight.
Verhoeven did have a nasty welt on his right ribcage after a hard body kick, but afterwards he played it down.
“It’s just surface damage. Daniel has a quick kick like a snap, a whip, it’s just a quick kick, there’s no internal damage,” he said.
The build-up to the fight had been marked by an unusually vocal Ghita going after Verhoeven on Twitter. Initially Verhoeven seemed taken aback but he soon started to give as good as he got, resulting in a high level of fan interest.
Now that the dust has settled, is the feud with his former training partner over? Verhoeven certainly believes so, though he wasn’t entirely sure at first.
“I asked him, 'are we good?' and he said ‘Of course’. It's just hyping the fight. We hadn’t seen each other for awhile [before this fight],” he said.
“At the end of the day we are all athletes. We are all sportsmen and it is what it is. But we are both at the top [of the division] and we may have to fight each other again so I don’t think we will be training together any time soon. But we can say hi.”
