The long-awaited debut of Aaron Pico in the UFC finally has a date and opponent. The promotion announced on Saturday that Pico will face Lerone Murphy at UFC 319, which will be held in Chicago.<\/p>\n
Pico, with a record of 13-4, was originally scheduled to debut against Movsar Evloev at a UFC Fight Night event. However, Evloev was forced to withdraw earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Following Evloev’s withdrawal, Pico publicly requested the UFC to schedule him a new fight as soon as possible. The 145-pound matchup against Murphy (16-0-1) will be the co-main event of UFC 319, scheduled for August 16 in Chicago.<\/p>\n
This change represents an interesting turn for the featherweight division. Although Pico was never a champion in Bellator MMA, he has long been considered one of the best fighters outside the UFC.<\/p>\n
At 28 years old, Pico was at one point one of the most promising prospects in MMA history, with an outstanding career in amateur wrestling and boxing.<\/p>\n
Initially, Pico was going to face Evloev, who is a high-level contender in the division. Now, his attention is focused on Murphy, who, although undefeated, has a lower ranking than Evloev.<\/p>\n
The current featherweight champion, Alexander Volkanovski, does not yet have his next title defense scheduled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Aaron Pico will debut in the UFC against Lerone Murphy The long-awaited debut of Aaron Pico in the UFC finally has a date and opponent. The promotion announced on Saturday that Pico will face Lerone Murphy at UFC 319, which will be held in Chicago. Pico, with a record of 13-4, was originally scheduled to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[482,6397,478,228],"class_list":{"0":"post-20360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-aaron-pico","9":"tag-lerone-murphy","10":"tag-mma","11":"tag-ufc"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}