If you’ve paid attention to Aaron Pico’s career to this point, you’ve seen a great many of the triumphs and trappings that come with being a blue-chip prospect. There was the initial hype as he segued straight from the wrestling mats of the 2016 Olympic Trials to prizefighting, followed by the thud heard around the world.
You might remember he lost his debut against 9-to-1 underdog Zach Freeman at Madison Square Garden in 2017 after Pico had been forecast as Bellator’s biggest get.
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“It’s going to be a fun trivia fact one day,” Pico jokes. “‘Did Aaron Pico win his pro debut?’ You know people will be like, yeah, he must’ve. ‘No, actually he didn’t … ’”
It was a rough start, yet today it feels like a million years ago.
That’s because Pico’s lived a lot of cage-life since then. He’s fought 17 times in total against free-swinging veterans, Wikipedia-less journeymen and Bellator mainstays like Henry Corrales. We’ve seen him fight methodically, we’ve seen him fight recklessly, we’ve seen him throw some serious hands. He’s won far more than he’s lost, posting a 13-4 record over the last eight years. As he gets set to debut in the UFC against Lerone Murphy on Saturday at UFC 319, he’s coming off three straight victories spread across three continents.
Aaron Pico is no longer the raw fighter who was thrown into the fire at Madison Square Garden in 2017.
(Mike Roach via Getty Images)
The Aaron Pico that was advertised early has developed into the Aaron Pico of today.
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Yet the old fight-game proverb holds true. It’s those earlier losses by Pico — three of which came before his 23rd birthday, all of which were entirely deflating to a highly touted upstart — that shaped his career. There were moments he thought it might be over. That the whole thing was a bust.
Looking back on it, he says that young kid was drinking from the firehose.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, I had some really dark days,” Pico says. “I had some days where I was like, ‘Man, can I actually do this?’ I mean, I think about it all now. I’ve thought about it a lot, and it keeps me sharp. I definitely bit off more than I can chew, but there’s a lot of moving parts that were going into that.
“But yeah, it was very difficult. It took me many, many years to get my confidence back, and I really owe that to the coaches and training. But in business, anybody that’s been very, very successful, there’s always a moment in their career or in their business where they think, ‘S***, should I keep going?’ And the answer is always like, yes, you should. It’s just my journey, and it helped me become what I am.”
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Pico is now 28 years old and a father. He claims he’s “not young anymore,” but that’s because he’s been under so many kinds of lights for so long. He was a decorated amateur wrestler, achieving stratospheric accomplishments before he was old enough to vote. He was an Olympic alternate in 2016 at the tender age of 19. When Freeman beat him, he was 20, just a kid who found himself competing at the Mecca of combat sports in New York.
Now as a UFC fighter, he’s far wiser in the ways of the hype game. He seems unaffected by any notion of “Octagon jitters” and doesn’t really sense a shift in magnitude to what he’s doing.
“I’ve had some time to really grow and learn and I have experience now,” he says. “There’s mistakes that I’ve learned from, and one thing that I’m really doing is enjoying every minute of it now, all the interviews and everything that comes with fighting. I’m having a good time. This is where I’ve always wanted to be, so I’m happy.”
If there’s a testament to Pico’s cavalier attitude as he heads into the UFC, it’s that he didn’t balk at signing on the dotted line to face Movsar Evloev — the undefeated Russian fighter who is the top contender at featherweight. Evloev is infamously hard to book, because not a lot of guys are interested in the risk/reward equation. Early returns show that Evloev slowly breaks opponents over the course of 15 minutes in lieu of putting them away, which isn’t exactly a desirable appointment (he has nine fights in the UFC, all decisions).
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Yet Pico never hesitated in agreeing to fight him. In fact, he flew to Morocco to begin training closer to the Abu Dhabi time zone, where the fight was originally going to be held, just as he did for his final fight with Bellator/PFL, his rematch win over Corrales a year-and-a-half ago in Saudi Arabia. He came back to the States to resume training when the venue first changed, and then later his opponent.
“I’m not one of those guys to say, ‘Oh, I can’t fight somebody,’” he says. “No, I’m trying to be the best in the world. I want to become a UFC world champion. And you don’t accomplish that by saying, ‘Nah, I don’t want to fight that guy.’ I have to fight. And some guys are scary to fight. Movsar is a scary thing, but how could you say no to that? Because you’re scared?”
“My son’s 4 years old, and honestly, I can’t look at my son when I tell him to go ride his bike down a big hill, and when he says, ‘Dad, I’m scared,’ I just say, ‘Oh, sorry. It’s OK to be scared.’ I tell him all the time. I said, ‘Dad’s scared when he goes and fights, but I do it anyways,’ so I got to practice what I preach. That’s my mindset.”
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It’s a mix of duty and courage, belief and big-picture understanding. The older, wiser Pico understands the game he’s playing these days, just as he understands the stakes of the situation he’s in. Had it been against Evloev, whom many believe has already punched his ticket to a title shot, it was almost certainly going to have title ramifications. Against Murphy, who is also unbeaten in nine UFC fights, it at least expedites him into a top-contender bout.
“At the end of the day, my whole mindset is to go do your job and everything else takes care of itself,” Pico says. “But for me, I go and dominate Lerone Murphy, I want [featherweight champion] Alexander [Volkanovski]. I know Alex is waiting for his time to fight. He’s been waiting, but I have a job to do.
“I want to fight for the belt. When you win the belt, that’s the pinnacle. But I got to stay focused at the task at hand, and that’s Murphy.”
Aaron Pico is all grown up. That’s what makes this debut so much different from the last one.
