Aaron Pico Now Faces Lerone Murphy In Debut For UFC 319 Co-Main Event

Former Bellator star Aaron Pico will now make his debut against Lerone Murphy in the co-main event of UFC 319 in Chicago on August 16th.

The 28-year-old Pico had originally been scheduled to make his first UFC appearance against the undefeated Movsar Evloev at UFC Fight Night 256 in May, before it was then switched to last weekend’s UFC On ABC 9 and then scrapped altogether when his opponent suffered an eye injury.

Now the UFC has shown their faith in Pico by immediately putting him into a high-profile co-main event spot on the upcoming UFC 319 pay-per-view instead.

Up to this point Pico has spent his entire 17-fight career in the Bellator promotion after signing with them as a blue-chip prospect back in 2017 following a successful amateur wrestling run that had led him to be picked as an Olympic alternate a year earlier.

Early in his MMA run Pico showed that he wasn’t just an accomplished wrestler by finishing a number of opponents via strikes thanks to his hard-hitting boxing, but the early hype train veered off-course when he suffered back-to-back KO and TKO losses in 2019.

However, since then Pico has won 9 of his last 10 fights, including two first round TKO finishes over Pedro Carvalho and Henry Corrales before signing for the UFC.

Pico immediately gets a tough assignment for his UFC debut as he’ll be going up against the undefeated Murphy, who has gone unbeaten in his nine UFC fights to date, including his last three victories over established players in the division like Edson Barboza, Dan Ige and Josh Emmett.

Pico vs. Murphy joins a UFC 319 card that will be headlined by a middleweight title fight between current champion Dricus du Plessis and Khamzat Chimaev, while Geoff Neal vs. Carlos Prates, Jared Cannonier vs. Michael ‘Venom’ Page and Tim Elliott vs. Kai Asakura are currently scheduled to round out the PPV main card.