Pico reacts to loss in MMA debut
Aaron Pico: “It’s definitely a tough pill to swallow, but there was obviously a hole in my game tonight, so it is what it is.”
It is extraordinarily unusual for a first-time fighter to debut on a pay per view television broadcast. Last time it happened in the UFC was boxer James Toney in 2010; it didn’t end well for him. Wrestling and combat sports prodigy Aaron Pico made his MMA debut on the main card of Bellator NYC on Saturday night.
Simply put, Aaron has all the makings of MMA’s next great superstar,” said Bellator president Scott Coker to ESPN on Thursday. “To have him here at Bellator is something special.
Pico got tapped out in 24 seconds by the unheralded Zach Freeman.
He caught me with that uppercut, it was a nice uppercut by him, said Pico at the post-fight conference, as transcribed by Danny Segura for MMAjunkie. Obviously, taking that shot I knew that he was going to try to take me to the ground somehow, he’s strong in his jiu-jitsu. … we’ll go to the drawing board with Bob [Cook] and my team and evaluate where we go next and go from here.
Anything can happen obviously in this sport, and I was aware of that. It’s definitely a tough pill to swallow, but there was obviously a hole in my game tonight, so it is what it is. This doesn’t define me, it’s my first fight, it’s just a bump in the road and I’ll be back for sure, I’ve dealt with this before throughout my career. Everybody has lost before, so I’m not going to go home and be depressed. I know what I need to do, so I’ll take a week off and I’ll be back in the gym for sure.
I felt like I could challenge myself, but hey, you make mistakes in life and it is what it is. The only thing I can keep doing now is just move forward. I still feel my abilities are better, but he was the better man today.”
Hats off to Freeman, this fight was offered to a lot of people and a lot of people turned it down. Freeman is a tough guy, he was 8-2 and I’ve seen him fight, I knew this wasn’t going to be an easy task and that’s what a lot of people didn’t realize. I wasn’t coming in there like, ‘Oh, I’m going to wreck this guy.’ I mean, I trained hard for this fight, I did what I had to do, but he came out on top and that’s just how it is.
“This fight game is a crazy world, but I loved it, I enjoyed every minute of it. My training went well, I enjoyed my time here in New York City, but the sun is going to rise and I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. I will be champ one day, I will be champ, it’s just my first fight and we’ll keep moving forward.
Prior to the fight, expectations were extraordinarily high.
Pico’s first MMA fight is on Saturday in New York City and I can tell you this: He will be a big, big star,” said Coker. The Bellator boss might well still be right. Fighters who lost their first fight include Andrei Arlovski (to Datsik??!?), Renan Barao, Cris Cyborg, Rafael dos Anjos, Jon Fitch, Akihiro Gono, Forrest Griffin, Dan Hardy, Mark Hunt, Carlos Newton, Kazushi Sakuraba, Jacare Souza, Glover Teixeira, and Caol Uno, among others.
If Pico ends up at that level, he has had a tremendous career.