Aaron Pico comments on loss

Aaron Pico was widely touted as the next big thing in Bellator MMA, and he may well be. But he was dominating vs. Henry Corrales in the co-feature bout of Bellator 214 on Saturday night, when commentator ‘Big’ John McCarthy cautioned that he needed to be patient, and not stay in the pocket. Pico stayed on the pocket and got knocked out for the first time.

At the post-fight press conference, Pico reflected.

When you win the media is always here, when you win,” said Pico, as transcribed by Dave Doyle for MMA Fighting. “And you have to show your respect, you can’t just be coming out when things are good. When the s*** hits the fan, you gotta be a man.

There’s really no excuses to make. I felt good out there. My training camp went well. I hit him. I think I have so much power in my hands, I don’t realize I knock people down. It happened so fast. Obviously, I made a mistake by staying in the pocket too long. It’s a 50/50 chance of somebody getting knocked out. That sucks, it sucks bad. But hey, I’m 22 years old, I don’t have this figured out yet. It’s something that needs to be slowed down for me. I need to use my wrestling a little bit more and we’ll go from there. We’ll go back to the drawing board.

I just need to take my time. I haven’t gotten to use my wrestling because I’ve been knocking all these people out, but it’s a learning lesson against these veterans, they’re able to endure the shots and find their spots and weather the storm a little bit.

Do we take lesser opponents? Okay, give me a lesser opponent. There’s going to be a hefty hospital bill, because I will really f***ing hurt somebody bad. That’s for me personally, I will hurt somebody that’s the same record as me. I will literally hurt them.

I f***ing hate to lose. I hate to lose, it’s that simple, whether it’s my pro debut or for a world title or whether it’s just a regular guy, that’s why it hurts so much. There’s a lot of stuff that goes into it, you know?

This fight was not just about Pico losing, it was about Henry Corrales winning – huge congratulations to him.