Back in 2005, when he was just 16 years old, Rico Verhoeven made the walk for the first time as a professional fighter against a full-grown adult named Wilbert Dam. It was in the southern part of The Netherlands, not far from where he grew up in Bergen op Zoom near the Belgium border, and kickboxing was already a huge part of his life. His father, Jos, was a karate black belt who had for years been pointing Rico towards the ring lights.
And with such names as Ramon Dekkers, Ernesto Hoost and Peter Aerts having been celebrated Dutch champions — and therefore national treasures to a young kid’s mind — Rico had all the examples he needed.
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“I can remember I was just a kid with a dream, man, just a kid with a dream,” he says looking back on it. “At that time, my dad was behind me pushing me in the direction of like, ‘Yo, we’re going to do this. We’re going to make you big. You’ve got to become champion.’ That was the dream. And then, yeah, all those years later, the dream became reality.”
Not much is remembered about Dam today, other than he got whooped by a kid barely old enough to have his driver’s license. It was Verhoeven’s first victory, in what would become a lifetime of wins. As he gets set to headline GLORY 100, a milestone affair which takes place at the Ahoy in Rotterdam on Saturday, looking back at all he’s been able to do in the ring feels closer to fiction than any movie that’s been made about combat sports.
“It’s just been like one big roller-coaster,” Verhoeven says. “My life has been a movie, man. I think I first saw [kickboxing] on television, and I saw Peter Aerts become champion for the third time in his career. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s what I want.’ I was maybe nine or something.
“I’d already started training when I was maybe six, so we watched kickboxing a lot, and of course my dad was training me, so that’s how I got into the whole thing. And at a certain point, my dad just saw something. He saw a talent, like, ‘Hey, when I show him something, he does it and it works.’ He thought, ‘He’s big, he’s strong — hey, this might work!’”
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Verhoeven is cooking dinner as he reminisces about his early days in the fight game, back to a time when there was zero fanfare surrounding him. It feels like a lifetime ago. These days, especially in his home country, he’s a superstar. And in the twilight of his fighting career, he has become a master at multitasking because, well, he has to.
He runs businesses on the side. He does charity work. He acts in movies and does voiceover work. He spends time with the King of the Netherlands, King Willem-Alexander, and he calls Martin Garrix — a Dutch DJ of no small acclaim — a friend. Another one of his buddies, F1 champion Max Verstappen, loves to hang (and train) with the heavyweight champion whenever possible.
In other words, he’s in high demand.
And it’s all because of the kickboxing ring, which has given Verhoeven a life he could never have dreamed of. He is not so much just a champion in the Netherlands, as he is a source of national pride. When he makes the walk, the country swoons. When he goes to the grocery store, people do a double take, because — as some have called him — he has become like Holland’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
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“Especially here in the small town that I live in,” he says. “It’s just like you get stopped a lot and people ask for pictures or just want to have a chat, and we just flow with it. People are excited. We take time for them as well. We take time for the fans because they are the ones that are buying the tickets to come and see the fights or buying the pay-per-view.”
This weekend Verhoeven will face GLORY’s former light heavyweight champion, Artem Vakhitov, in what will be his 13th overall heavyweight title defense. You might remember Vakhitov winning on UFC’s Contender Series not that long ago, after which he was offered a contract to compete in the UFC. A segue to MMA will have to hold as he takes on GLORY’s greatest boogeyman. The North American audience may not understand, but Europe does.
And it’s not a stretch to say that Rico Verhoeven is the greatest heavyweight champion in all of combat sports. His run is unparalleled.
Verhoeven has held the heavyweight belt for more than a decade. He has won 25 straight fights under the GLORY banner, against the behemoths and Goliaths of the sport, past, present, and future. He has stood alone at the end of one-night tournaments, the most recent of which coming in a heavyweight grand prix in Arnhem last year. He has put exclamation marks on rivalries with Errol Zimmerman and Ben Saddik. He has handled threats from Badr Hari and Gokhan Saki. He has blasted through familiar names in the MMA world, like Sergei Kharitinov and Antonio Silva.
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He even beat his mentor Aerts in Tokyo, nearly a dozen years ago.
Boxing has Oleksandr Usyk and Daniel Dubois, the UFC has Jon Jones, Tom Aspinall and Francis Ngannou, and GLORY has Verhoeven, who has held the heavyweight title for more than 4,000 days. Think about that. Four thousand days ago Fabricio Werdum held the UFC’s heavyweight title.
“I hate losing,” Verhoeven says, the simplest explanation to a run of dominance imaginable. It’s something he hasn’t done a whole lot of, which is incredible when you think that Verhoeven last loss under the GLORY banner was at the first one he competed in — 2012’s GLORY 4 in Japan.
“It feels like it,” he says when asked if he feels old for 36. “I’ve been around for a while around the block. I’ve literally seen it all and I’ve traded some punches and kicks with the very best. But I’m having fun with it, still having fun with it, and I’m thankful that we still here are still capable of flowing and entertaining everybody on the highest stage, on the biggest stages in the world.”
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And speaking of stages, whenever Verhoeven does finally hang up the gloves, he says he wants to segue into Hollywood. He starred alongside Frank Grillo in a movie called “Black Lotus,” which was a lead role, and had a solid cameo in “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,” which stars Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr. One of Verhoeven’s good friends is action man Jason Statham, who has encouraged him to keep at it.
It’s not a stretch to say that Rico Verhoeven is the greatest heavyweight champion in all of combat sports. His run is unparalleled.
“I can honestly say that I truly found my new passion with acting,” he says. “It’s so much fun. I like to put the work in, I have fun while doing it, and I think that’s the most important thing, when you’re on the set for 10, 12, 14, 16 hours. I just have fun.
“And it’s so cool to see as well, in acting as in — for example — kickboxing or in sports in general, people just keep beating the craft. They keep getting better because, with acting and in sports, we’re never finished, and we’re never done learning.”
First, it’s GLORY 100, a 20-fight extravaganza celebrating kickboxing, featuring four world title bouts, four four-man one-night tournaments before the hero’s welcome for Verhoeven’s main event against Vakhitov. At 36, you’re never sure what comes next, but if Verhoeven has his say, he’ll do something “crazy” before he signs off for good.
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“My eyes are definitely on a crossover fight,” he says. “Right now the focus is on Artem. But beyond that, I would definitely see myself in a huge crossover fight, and yeah, Francis Ngannou would be one of the names to do it with. Or maybe Anthony Joshua, whatever, I’m down. I’m down to do it. I love it.
“What would be really cool is if we look at a crossover fight and do something totally different that hasn’t been done before. So, for example, I don’t know, I fight a boxer in boxing and then a boxer fights me kickboxing. That way you both get out of your own comfort zone.”
For 20 years, Rico Verhoeven has put together one of the most storied careers in combat sports. But isn’t done just yet. There are bigger stages to conquer.
“I’m open to it man,” he says. “I’m open to just do something crazy, something really crazy, something next level to leave a mark.”
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