Aaron Pico Focused On Letting Things Flow, Having Fun

That mission is to become a UFC world champion, and it’s one that Pico has held since he was a child. While that’s not uncommon for a lot of today’s stars who have grown up alongside the promotion, the difference is that none of those other athletes have been under the spotlight since those formative years the way Pico has been.

A quick Google search of “Aaron Pico prospect” will unearth a 2014 article where “Crazy” Bob Cook, then one of the top coaches in the sport at American Kickboxing Academy, called Pico “the greatest MMA prospect I’ve ever seen.” Pico was 17 at the time and still more than three years away from making his debut as mixed martial artist.

Watch This And Every UFC Event Live On Paramount+

There were very clear reasons for the excitement and hype, as Pico was a standout in boxing, wrestling and pankration as a youth, winning state and national titles in all three disciplines before committing his focus to freestyle wrestling, with designs on making the 2016 Olympic team.

When he came up short, finishing second at the team trials in his weight class, Pico made the move to MMA.

Where most competitors make their first pro start on a small show somewhere close to home, with a favorable matchup and only a couple hundred eyes max looking on, the Whittier, California native’s debut took place on the Bellator NYC pay-per-view card from Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Two of the night’s three title fights took place before Pico hit the cage, and even on a card featuring a host of established, formidable names in the sport, all eyes were on the “can’t-miss prospect” who was finally going to step into the cage for the first time.

View Pico's Athlete Profile

The fight lasted 24 seconds as Pico was rocked and submitted by journeyman lightweight Zach Freeman.

“There has been a lot of pressure on me for a lot of years,” Pico said. “I’d be lying if I said it’s not hard — it’s very difficult — and sometimes you have to calm your mind down. I have a good team around me, people I can call and vent to, but it comes down to this: I love what I do. It’s given me a good life, I’ve met a lot of awesome people, travelled the world, and it’s the best job I ever had… Growing up as a youth, I always just wrestled and did my best. A national championship turned into two, and two turned into three, and it’s like, ‘Let’s go to the World Championships.’ Then you’re a world champion and you have three world medals and then I was boxing and I loved boxing. You do it because you love it and it’s fun.

“I think a lot about when I was a young kid and I was at the boxing club, I was there because I loved it; three hours would go by so fast,” he continued, the wistfulness in his voice saying as much as the words themselves. “When I was at wrestling practice, it was fun, and I’m trying to remind myself to go back to the 12-year-old Aaro Pico that was doing it just for fun; talking to my mom in the car about boxing and wrestling and things I wanted to do… I was dreaming, and sometimes when you get older, life happens and the pressure of it (comes), but you have to remind yourself to go back to when you were a young boy and you let it flow and have fun.

“That’s when I was shining the best,” Pico added with a laugh. “That’s when I was winning world championships and national championships because there was no pressure; it was just a very simple life.”

Follow @UFCNews on: Threads | Instagram | X

Pico is hoping to carry that child-like, “keep it fun” approach that permeated his camp into this weekend’s matchup with Pitbull in Miami.

Anyone that follows the sport understands the irony of this matchup taking place inside the Octagon as Pitbull lorded over the Bellator featherweight for the entirety of Pico’s time with the promotion, but their paths never crossed. Now, after five years fighting outside of the UFC, they’re set to share the Octagon this weekend at Kaseya Center.

“Called my team and said, ‘It’s time to get ready. We’re facing Patricio Pitbull on April 11 in Miami,’” Pico said. “I did what I had to do… When you get that phone call, your heart starts pounding, you kind of go into ‘Alright, I’m gonna fight in a couple months,’ but I had a lot of time to prepare. I did my time in Morocco, spent a lot of time there training, and I’m excited to show what I’ve been working on the last three or four months on Saturday.

“I had a lot of great partners from all over the world that joined me there and just got to work,” Pico said regarding the decision to train in Morocco for this camp. “It was very structured and I had guys that were better grapplers than me, better strikers than me. Going into sparring being a little bit uncomfortable, being a little nervous, that’s what I needed. Sometimes you need to be uncomfortable and being in Morocco allowed me to focus on that.

MORE UFC 327: Fighters On The Rise

“It was a really good training camp for me,” he added. “Everything is where it needs to be, and now I just gotta go do my job, and have fun doing it on Saturday night.”

And if everything goes according to plan, what do that look like?

“Win!” he said emphatically, chasing his words with a laugh. “That’s all I’m thinking about is winning; how it comes, I don’t care. If it’s a decision, it’s a decision. If it’s a knockout, that would be great, but at the end of the day, winning pays the bills.”