Featherweight Aaron Pico was supposed to be fighting Arnold Allen this Saturday at UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi, but the MMA Gods weren’t having it.
With Allen out of the fight, it will instead be Losene Keita stepping in, a former Oktagon champion who will make this a battle of two stars who built their names elsewhere.
Pico (14-5), of course, is best known for his Bellator MMA run, and is now 1-1 under the UFC banner. As for the change in opponents, while it’s disappointing he’s no longer fighting a top five foe, Pico has found an upside.
“For me, Arnold Allen was in the top five, so when I’m looking at it from that perspective, of course I was a little bit bummed. That really puts you in a good position, if you win that fight, for a title,” he admitted during this week’s UFC 333 media day.
“But one thing that I can say about my new opponent, he’s so big in Europe. When I told people when I was fighting Arnold Allen, of course a lot of people know who he is, but I think the fans, from a stylistic perspective, were happy with Keita. And people are more eager to see that. Because you’ve seen his fights, he’s a knockout artist, and he’s young. So it doesn’t matter as far as where I stand. I just want to fight, I want to get more experience.”
It might sound strange for Aaron Pico to be looking for experience 19 fights into his pro career. However, having been finished in his UFC debut by a Lerone Murphy spinning backfist, Pico changed his mental approach to fighting.
“After my debut, I came with the mindset that I want to have a beginner mentality. I want to learn, I want to get as much experience as I can, and that’s the way I’m approaching this fight,” he stated. “It’s just another Fight Week for me, another walk into the cage, another fight, and this is all adding up to experience.”
Pico believes that he needed to be humbled, but it has nothing to do about attitude. Rather, it’s about how he was fighting. “I was fighting just too out of control,” he admitted. “When I would go into a fight, the mindset was, I just want to get this thing over. I just want to go in there to do what I have to do, get the win and go home.”
Since his debut, Pico has worked with his coaches to “switch the mindset a little bit.”
“Now I want to go in there, and I want to enjoy. I want to cook the fight a little.” That means adding “a little salt, a little pepper. I don’t want to just blast the heat and let it go. Just cook the fight, enjoy, use all your skills, and have fun. The mindset before was getting me in trouble, especially with the high-level competition as you can see in my UFC debut.”
Watch the full UFC 333 media day appearance by Aaron Pico above.