Joe Rogan moved from scorecard frustration to a possible judging fix while speaking with Rico Verhoeven about the controversial Oleksandr Usyk stoppage.
The discussion came during JRE MMA Show #183, where Verhoeven revisited the May 23, 2026 heavyweight title fight at the Pyramids of Giza. Usyk stopped Verhoeven at 2:59 of Round 11, but the open scoring and late stoppage kept the fight alive as a wider judging debate.
Rogan Says Five Judges Should Be Considered
Rogan began by saying Verhoeven had done far more than merely make the fight close. He framed the official cards as the part that made the ending harder to accept.
“And you won 10 fucking rounds, man. You won 10 rounds,” Rogan said.
“I don’t give a fuck what those judges were saying. Those judges were trying to say it was close,” Rogan said.
“That’s a crime. If that went to the scorecards and somehow or another you lost that decision, that would have been a crime. A crime,” Rogan said.
“It felt unjust. The stoppage felt unjust. It didn’t seem like it made sense. Like they were looking for a way to stop the fight,” Rogan said.
Verhoeven said the hardest part was not simply the loss. It was the gap between how fighters, commentators, and trainers viewed the fight and how the scorecards looked inside the arena.
“I don’t like losing, but if it happens, it happens. But I think that’s the part that makes it even harder, that it felt so unjust,” Verhoeven said.
“They all see the fight a certain way like you saw it, like how I experienced it. And then when we look at the scorecards, we get like a totally different fight. What is going on there?” Verhoeven said.
Rogan then separated two possible explanations: corruption or incompetence. Neither one, in his view, was acceptable for a fight of that size.
“I don’t want to think it’s corruption. But it’s almost worse if it’s incompetence,” Rogan said.
“And then you have this enormous fight and you have terrible judging. Terrible judging,” Rogan said.
“It’s almost worse if it’s incompetence because if you’ve got these people that don’t know what they’re watching and they’re calling it like their eyes, their decision makes a difference about whether it’s a W or an L and it doesn’t make any sense. It’s not fair. It’s not right,” Rogan said.
“I think at this point in time, they should really seriously consider having alternative scoring,” Rogan said.
His first structural fix was simple: increase the number of official judges.
“One of the things I like about Glory is that Glory has more than three judges,” Rogan said.
“Five. I think five’s the right number. I think three is too few because you could have two people fuck it up and one person gets it right,” Rogan said.
“But if you had two more judges, the odds are they’re going to get it right too. Usually the people that fuck it up, it’s the minority,” Rogan said.
The App Idea Came From Expert Scoring
Verhoeven pushed the conversation toward transparency. He compared the situation to video-review systems in other sports, where a missed call can be corrected quickly rather than protected after the fact.
“Everybody wants transparency,” Verhoeven said.
“There should be people or a situation where it’s like, ‘Hey, sorry ref, but you made a mistake. This wasn’t the right call. So we can overturn it in a split of a second,'” Verhoeven said.
Rogan also gave the replay idea a limit, because he said fight stoppages can be harder to unwind than normal scoring mistakes.
“The only thing that’s really hard to do with that subjectively is fight stoppages. Because sometimes, at least in MMA, a referee sees things in a fighter that you might not see things watching it on television or sitting at my seat as a commentator,” Rogan said.
“A referee will see a guy’s eyes roll back in his head. He’ll see something that I don’t see and I’ll go, ‘Oh, I thought that was a little quick,'” Rogan said.
Verhoeven answered with the specific points his team raised in the appeal.
“We got stopped after the bell,” Verhoeven said.
“I wasn’t disorientated, didn’t have no concussion or whatever symptoms,” Verhoeven said.
Rogan said even a successful appeal would run into another problem if officials tried to go backward through the cards.
“Would they go to the judge’s scorecards? And if they did go to the judge’s scorecards, what would it be? A majority draw?” Rogan said.
“Let’s look at the scoring cards again. Other people, other judges look at the scorecards and look at the fight and score it again,” Verhoeven said.
That is when Rogan added the app idea. He did not pitch it as a replacement for official scorecards.
Verhoeven directly asked Rogan whether he could help push a cleaner judging system.
“Wouldn’t it be something? Wouldn’t you be maybe a spokesman or a part? Could you be a part of a way how we can make this whole judging thing and this whole transparency better?” Verhoeven said.
He described it as a verified expert layer that fans, fighters, and officials could see beside the judges.
“I think one way to do it is to have more judges like Glory does. I think five is probably the right number,” Rogan said.
“And I think another thing to do is maybe have a bunch of people online that are recognized experts like top trainers, top commentators, people that really understand the sport,” Rogan said.
“Maybe they get an app, maybe there’s like a special app that those guys can judge on. So you have a collective expert opinion and you get to look at that as well,” Rogan said.
Verhoeven said that was already the practical split around his fight: the ringside cards saw one fight, while experienced observers saw another.
“The professionals, the trainers, the commentators, they all saw the fight a certain way, but the judges saw something totally different,” Verhoeven said.
“It’s either incompetence or it’s corruption. And I think it might be a little bit of both,” Rogan said.
“I think maybe the corruption isn’t even conscious, but it’s like they know who the promoter wants to win,” Rogan said.
Rogan then spelled out why he thought the incentives around Usyk made the judging issue bigger than one disputed fight.
“They want Usyk to win, because Usyk is where you can get the next Tyson Fury fight or the Anthony Joshua, well, not Anthony Joshua, but whoever he would decide to fight,” Rogan said.
“And now it’s going to be Deontay Wilder, which nobody’s calling for,” Rogan said.
The Usyk-Verhoeven Fight Still Drives The Argument
Usyk entered the Giza fight unbeaten and left at 25-0 with 16 knockouts after retaining heavyweight gold. Verhoeven, one of kickboxing’s greatest heavyweight champions, dropped to 1-1 as a professional boxer after taking Usyk into the final seconds of Round 11.
The scorecards made the fight more complicated. Two cards were even before the stoppage, while one card had Verhoeven ahead by one round. Rogan said that was exactly why the bout became a judging story instead of only a stoppage story.
“There’s no way they would stop that fight. No way. It’s either incompetence or corruption. And I tend to think corruption,” Rogan said.
The late stoppage was not the only complaint. Verhoeven said the open scoring changed how his corner approached the championship rounds.
“It was just a few seconds. Let it go and let me at least give me the opportunity and give the fans the opportunity to see that 12th round,” Verhoeven said.
“But also looking now looking back at it because there was also open scoring and I love open scoring because within that gives you the right position and gives the fighters the position like okay where we standing within this fight,” Verhoeven said.
“After eight rounds my trainer Peter Fury says okay we gotta really start winning these rounds now,” Verhoeven said.
“I was like, what? Am I hearing this right? I feel like I’m already winning these rounds. He said, no, we’re equal. We’re equal on the scorecards after eight rounds,” Verhoeven said.
“But now we had to keep pushing,” Verhoeven said.
Verhoeven said the scoring pressure fed into the mistake that gave Usyk the finishing chance.
“Walking straight in swinging and we said in the whole prep I tried that a few times like oh that’s dangerous don’t do that with Usyk and still for whatever reason I did that at that exact moment,” Verhoeven said.
“I’m just looking at what I’m responsible for and I’m responsible for myself. And I gave them now this opportunity by making that mistake and that’s like oh so hard to get over that for myself,” Verhoeven said.
“I was like a big baby. I was crying in my hotel room like a big big baby. I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ I was so close at like shocking the world and now this happened. It was like, ‘Oh, it hurts so bad,'” Verhoeven said.
Rogan said the scorecard reveal made no sense from his seat.
“I was on the edge of my seat. And when we’re going into the ninth and tenth rounds, I was like, ‘I don’t see how Usyk can win,'” Rogan said.
“When they started talking about the scorecards, I was like, ‘What the fuck are they watching? This is crazy,'” Rogan said.
“They’re looking at a different fight,” Rogan said.
“It really almost was the biggest upset in boxing history,” Rogan said.
Verhoeven said his side appealed the finish and believed several points were acknowledged, but the outcome was left in place.
“I appealed it. I appealed it,” Verhoeven said.
“Everything we appealed upon, they were like, ‘No, you’re right. You’re right. You’re right.’ But they never overturned,” Verhoeven said.
Rogan also questioned why the most competitive heavyweight fight of Usyk’s reign had not immediately pushed a rematch into the center of the conversation, especially with Usyk already linked to Deontay Wilder and Jon Jones for a final fight.
“It was the most competitive fight of Usyk’s career as a heavyweight champion. And they’re not even talking at all about a rematch,” Rogan said.
“If any fight warrants a rematch, it’s that fight,” Rogan said.
“That fucking rematch would be gigantic,” Rogan said.
The rematch part of the exchange was also tied to the judging argument. Rogan asked what would have happened if Usyk had been the hurt fighter at the same moment.
“What if he was in this position?” Verhoeven said.
Rogan contrasted the rematch case with a possible Wilder fight.
“Deontay is not Deontay Wilder of 2019. No, he’s a different guy now,” Rogan said.
“For me, I don’t want a rematch just to have the rematch. I would like the rematch because it makes sense. There’s a story within this rematch. It’s huge,” Verhoeven said.
“It is unfinished business,” Verhoeven said.
“It’s a Rocky story. A real live Rocky story,” Rogan said.
“Well, not only that as a promoter, what makes more sense than that fight?” Rogan said.
“You just got off of a crazy performance. And the whole world got to see it,” Rogan said.
“It would be so huge. It’s the ultimate Rocky story,” Rogan said.
Verhoeven has already asked for accountability after the open-scorecard and appeal dispute, and his coach previously pointed to the after-the-bell stoppage argument. Rogan’s app idea now gives that same controversy a broader combat-sports angle: more judges, visible expert scoring, and less room for a disputed card to vanish behind the result line.
