Former opponent explains how Aaron Pico “ends up being his own worst enemy”

Aaron Pico had a fairly tumultuous UFC debut in Chicago earlier this month when he was felled with a viral spinning back elbow, with a former opponent of Pico’s weighing in on that contest. Jeremy Kennedy offered up his viewpoint on that fight ahead of his return to Battlefield Fight League as Kennedy vies for the BFL interim lightweight title against Jeremy Henry at BFL 84 on September 4th.

Kennedy secured a win over Aaron Pico under the Bellator banner when Pico lost via first round shoulder injury at Bellator 286 in October 2022. When touching on the UFC debut that Pico had against Lerone Murphy at UFC 319 and how all of that played out there, Kennedy said,

“That’s tough, man. It’s; you feel for a guy like Aaron, you know, he does all the right things and he just; he got caught with a spinning elbow, you know, on a fight he was definitely ahead on. I mean, it was only a few minutes in, so you can’t really say that.”

“But, I mean, he; congrats to Lerone [Murphy]. You know, he capitalized on somebody who’s such a forward, aggressive fighter. That’s something I noticed as well when I was training to fight him is everything is so, so forward. He doesn’t really set too much stuff up.”

“He’s just; he doesn’t give too much respect to his opponents and that kind of ends up being his own worst enemy, you know, as just running into things and that’s exactly what happened unfortunately. I think he’ll be back. He needs to polish some things up, but he has the skill set and the work ethic to be a champion.”

Aaron Pico and his path since the Jeremy Kennedy setback

Aaron Pico ended up rebounding from the Jeremy Kennedy defeat to string together a three fight winning streak before his most recent setback to Lerone Murphy. Pico would secure a unanimous decision win over James Gonzalez at Bellator 295 to distance himself from the loss to the Canadian combatant.

Pico would then elongate that winning streak to three by securing consecutive first round finishes. Aaron Pico would secure those stoppages in the opening stanza over both Pedro Carvalho at Bellator 299 and against Henry Corrales at PFL vs. Bellator with the latter fight seeing him avenge a prior knockout defeat to Corrales.