Former Bellator star Aaron Pico suffered a disastrous debut in the co-main event of UFC 319 earlier this month when he was badly KO’d by a spinning elbow from Lerone Murphy, and his manager Ali Abdelaziz has now ruled out him fighting again this year.

“He’s doing good. He’s very positive,” Abdelaziz told Submission Radio when asked about Pico. “This can happen to the best of them. It’s a game of inches. It can happen to everyone. But one of the things I know about Aaron, he’s been there before many times, and he always came back on top. I have no doubt in my mind he will come back. He will fight for a championship one day. I have no doubt he will fight for a UFC belt one day.”

“I have rules, man,” Abdelaziz continued. “When guys get knocked out like that, I’m not going to book him a fight for at least six months. After six months, he can fight. But (he needs to take off) at least six months. It’s not healthy for a fighter to go out like that and just try to come back early.

“We see it over and over happen to many guys, and it doesn’t work, like ([Volkanovski]. It doesn’t work good for them when the guys come back this early. They say health is the most important, and he’ll be back. I’m not worried about it, honestly. He’s good. His health is good.”

This seems like a sensible decision, particularly as Pico has had question marks over his chin in the past, having suffered nasty back-to-back losses via strikes in 2019 that threatened to completely derail his hype train at the time.

Pico had gone on to win nine of his next 10 fights after that to pave his way to the UFC, but the brutal nature of the fight against Murphy in his first UFC appearance is another major setback, and one that he’ll now unfortunately now have to stew over until 2026.