That wasn't the former Glory Kickboxing heavyweight champion's plan for the second boxing bout his combat sports career, however.

On Monday's "Inside The Ring," Verhoeven said he was originally planning to face former two-time unified heavyweight champ Anthony Joshua early this year. Those plans changed after Joshua was in a car accident December 29 in Nigeria, which left two friends dead and him being hospitalized with minor injuries.

With Joshua out of action indefinitely, Verhoeven pivoted to Usyk (24-0, 15 KOs), The Ring’s No. 1-ranked pound-for-pound fighter and a two-time undisputed heavyweight champion. The bout is being sanctioned as a voluntary title defense by the WBC.

“I was already in training camp,” Verhoeven said on "Inside The Ring." “We started off [in] December. In January, I was in Spain and in training camp. From there on, they said we probably got to wait till March to see if and when AJ is coming back. We discussed that with the team, but we were in full training camp.

“So I said, ‘OK, who else will be out there for us that will be interesting?’ I said if we fight somebody, we come out of a sport which we reigned for so long as the heavyweight champion, so we should fight a big name. How many big names in the heavyweight division are there in boxing? So we said Oleksandr Usyk. Why not? So that's how, that's how the idea came.”

Verhoeven is 66-10 (with 21 KOs) as a kickboxer. He reigned as the heavyweight champion of Glory Kickboxing, the world's top kickboxing organization, from 2013 until vacating the title last year. Verhoeven has lost once in that span, suffering a unanimous decision defeat to Andrey Gerasimchuk in 2015.

In his last fight on June 14, Verhoeven defeated former Glory light heavyweight champion Artem Vakhitov by unanimous decision. Verhoeven has one boxing match under his belt, defeating a winless Janos Finfera by second-round knockout in 2014.

Usyk, 39, became the undisputed heavyweight champion for the second time in his last fight, a fifth-round knockout of Daniel Dubois on July 19 at Wembley Stadium, before later vacating the WBO title.

The former undisputed cruiserweight champion has two wins apiece over Joshua, Dubois and Tyson Fury.