Issue 167
May 2018
Aaron Pico’s debut defeat had the haters decrying the downfall of another overhyped young fighter, but he’s back on the path to MMA greatness.
Map out a career in fight sports, and it rarely, if ever, goes to plan. But if you were to pick one athlete in MMA and say that they have looked destined to ‘make it’, to become a world champion, then it’s Aaron Pico.
Bellator featherweight
Record: 4-3,
Team: Bodyshop,
Born: Whittier, California.
Sitting with the 21-year-old, eyes bright, hinged on every word and eager to learn, the Californian is the epitome of the most modern of model professionals.
He is setting a template for the next generation of mixed martial artists, the hybrid fighter who has travelled the world preparing to graduate into a career in fight sports.
The bright kid from Whittier, SoCal, has been referred to as the most hyped fighter who has ever come into MMA. Observers proclaimed that Pico was a world champion in the making before he’d thrown a kick or had landed an elbow. He had grown up and trained like a Spartan.
But in this unforgiving landscape, scripts get torn up. So it did for Pico, who lost on his debut – on the televised main card at a huge Bellator NYC event last year at Madison Square Garden.
On the biggest stage possible, Pico was dropped with an uppercut and submitted in 28 seconds by veteran Zach Freeman.
It must have been tough on him, I suggest, but he barely blinks to express deep thought about it. It has been processed. It has been compartmentalised, rationalised and dealt with.
“It was. But I’ve learned a lot about myself since. I have all the skill set in the world but I need the time in the cage. I really wanted to fight at Madison Square Garden. He caught me with that uppercut and got the choke. It is what it is.
“You’ve got to take the good with the good and the bad with the bad. As far as the training camp and the media stuff, all that went well. It just wasn’t my night. But I will still have the last laugh… and I will do whatever I possibly can to become champion of the world. I will even die trying.
“I think about becoming champion every day. I train and I love what I do. I will be world champion. I am 100% confident about that. For some, it takes longer than others.
"Everybody has a different path. My journey is just a little different, but that’s not to say I won’t get there. Once I get my feet wet and get composed in there, I will be world champion. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
He bounced back from that upset loss by cutting from 155 to 145lb with two brutal, first-round knockouts. The first was a beautiful left hook KO that felled Justin Linn at Bellator 183. Then a perfect body shot finished Shane Krutchen at Bellator 192. They went straight into most people’s highlight reels of 2017.
They must have felt good. “Of course,” he says. “The people around me know what I’m capable of doing. It just comes down to one thing – experience in the cage. And that’s what I need to accumulate. I need to rack up those hours in the cage. I’m still very young in my MMA career and I have a lot to learn. That’s what it’s all about.
“The whole objective to me is to be world champion. It’s my goal to win fights and eventually become champion. That’s why I am in this sport, that’s why I am doing it. Everybody has got a different journey and a path and some have more bumps than others.
"At the end of the day, we’re all trying to become world champion and that’s what I’m focusing on.”
Pico is already an elite grappler and has been at the level for some time where he couldn’t just be in one place to get everything, simply because the level was not high enough. He had experience in folkstyle, freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling, having won the U.S. national championship in all three styles, at both cadet and junior levels. He was wrestling at the highest level, and he was an Olympic alternate.
He also had an amateur boxing background as a youth, earning the national junior Golden Gloves title in 2009, as well as experience in the modern form of pankration. He won national and international competitions in that, too.
Half of Pico’s life has been spent travelling and training around the world in a quest for constant development.
“That’s the kind of athlete I am,” he says. “I need to be challenged at the highest level, and by different flavours. Mediocre is not good enough. I’ve been to Dagestan. I’ve been to Russia, Ukraine, Italy, Bulgaria, Croatia, Israel, Japan.
"Those people in Dagestan are so nice. I felt totally at home. They take great care of you, great hospitality. I definitely want to go back.
“I’m on the road all the time. I want to learn from everywhere. I’m very fortunate that my grandfather and dad have taken me everywhere. I want to be the best and I feel there’s not one central place you have to go to. You have to go everywhere – Thailand, Russia, wherever. I’ll do whatever I need to do to become the best. I take it one day at a time, but I’ve got big goals for the future.”
In April 2014, he signed a multi-year endorsement with Nike, and in November 2014, pocketed an unprecedented, long-term contract with Bellator. Its president, Scott Coker, says he has “all the makings of MMA’s next great superstar.”
All that attention and adulation is a lot to take on – especially for a 21-year-old. But he’s able to stay level-headed thanks to a grounded, yet fascinating, upbringing.
He’s less ghetto, more grooved character with a warrior calling. He’s Mexican-American. “Well, seventh generation here in California,” he explains proudly. “My great-great-great grandfather was the past Mexican governor of California.
“I think it helps that I come from a normal home. My mum is an RN, a nurse, and my dad sells medical products. I have friends from all over, but I just come from a normal home. I have an older brother who is 25 and going to nursing school.
"Everybody goes to college to become a doctor, lawyer or whatever, but from an early age I knew what I wanted to do and that was to be a fighter. Why not study and learn how to be a fighter? This is my job.”
One of the striking things about this young man before us is his utter self-belief and confidence, yet there is a subtle bed of modesty underneath it. Perhaps that is the safety net that allowed that first fall at MSG to land gently, rather than with an alarming thud.
“I’ve got a great team. I’ve got a great boxing coach, striking, I’ve got everything. I’m very professional with my job. I want to be the best. Obviously, I’ve got a great talent but that only gets you so far. I think what’s special about me is I love to work. That’s the biggest thing for me.”
He has dreamed of this since he was a little kid. Dreamed of it and then created his own MMA fights after wrestling practice. No phony wars, either. He was just eight or nine then, he recalls, learning to strike to compliment his rapidly-developing wrestling skills to start becoming a complete fighter from an extraordinarily early age – later modelling himself on his heroes, Chuck Liddell and Georges St-Pierre.
“I’ve known what I’ve wanted to do from an early age,” he explains. “I was doing kids MMA back when it was illegal. A lot of people don’t know where I’ve come from. I’ve done numerous amounts of pankration fights, I’ve gone overseas and fought…I started off wrestling and at the time there was a cage there and if we did good in wrestling, our treat was to go and fight in the cage.
“Then, I wasn’t very good at boxing so I told my dad I wanted to learn to box. I was eager. My next-door neighbour was a boxing coach. I went with him and I just fell in love with striking and boxing. That’s all I did every single day. Then I went back to wrestling and took a different path. But I knew from an early age I wanted to become a fighter. MMA was illegal for kids, but we would meet up at gyms.
“I would beg my dad to let me go fight. My parents would be working, my mum was going to nursing school at the time, and I found my way to the gym. I’d call my dad’s friend or my grandma, or someone else, anyone I could. I can honestly say I was addicted to boxing and fighting and would do anything I could.
"I found the European championships for kids in pankration and I was like dad, we have to go. That was in Ukraine. I had five or six fights there and had five knockouts. The final was tough, but I beat him.”
It became an addiction. It still is, but it’s also now a career. But despite the obsession with mixing his martial arts, that might not be enough for the man who now trains primarily out of Bodyshop MMA with fellow Bellator prospects Kevin ‘Baby Slice’ Ferguson Jr. and A.J. McKee.
Pico has also been moulded at AKA under the tutelage of Bob Cook and hones his hands with legendary boxing trainer Freddie Roach. That experience is possibly why he has not forgotten his boxing routes and still has ambitions of competing with bigger gloves in future. MMA athletes’ ventures into the ring have not been that successful so far, but Pico believes he can be one to buck the trend.
“I’d love to be boxing world champ, too,” he says. “I believe I can be one of those guys who can be a boxing world champion and an MMA world champion, legitimate. I believe that wholeheartedly. That’s a goal of mine and I think I can do it. I try to spar with the best boxers in the world. I go to the Wild Card Boxing Gym and spar there. I just love fighting. I dissect a lot of boxing, like Canelo, Mayweather, Sugar Ray Robinson.
"In MMA, I just watch all the fights. There are so many great fighters to watch.”
But there should be no doubt, for now, of this youngster’s dedication to MMA. And if the sport was looking for a young role model, Pico is surely it. Well-mannered, utterly committed, brutal in combat. For him, there could be no other way. He lives it, he loves it, and he knows that he has a short window of opportunity.
“My weight is 145. I feel strong and fast at that weight. I watch my weight all year round. That’s my lifestyle. I don’t cut lots. I eat the right things and dial it back down when you prepare for a fight. I don’t believe in going into a fight blown up and then taking it all off. That’s not professional in my opinion. That’s just me.
“You get 15 years if you’re lucky. It depends on how you take care of your body. I want to go on for a long time because this is what I enjoy. I love waking up in the morning and being able to go and train. I have no boss and get to do what I want to do. This is the best job in the world.”
He’s got a mountain to climb before he fulfils his promise and becomes champion, but Aaron Pico couldn’t be doing anything more to live up to the hype.
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