Aaron Pico made the decision to face the media following his loss at Bellator 214, and admitted he should probably fall back on his wrestling more.
Los Angeles, CA —Well, that did not go as planned. Aaron Pico got a big jump up in competition on Saturday at Bellator 214. Yet despite knocking Henry Corrales down early, things didn’t end in Pico’s favor. Corrales got back up, and later sent Pico crashing to the canvas. Lights out.
The young star did attend the Bellator 214 post-fight press conference, addressing the media, including Cageside Press. And it appears Pico, while disappointed, was taking it all in stride.
“I’m 22 years old. I’ve been here before. I lost my first pro fight,” he pointed out. “There’s really no excuses to make. I felt good out there, training camp went well. I hit him, I think I have so much power in my hands, I don’t realize I knock people down. It just happens so fast. But obviously I made a mistake by staying in the pocket too long. There’s a 50/50 chance of somebody getting knocked out.”
In this case, that was Pico. And he admits that he should probably turn to his wrestling now and then. “It sucks, it sucks bad. I’m 22 years old, I don’t have this figured out yet. It’s something that needs to slow down for me, I need to use my wrestling a little bit more. We’ll go from there, we’ll go back to the drawing board.”
Later, pressed about his wrestling skills again, he added “obviously I have a lot of power in my hands, but wait til they see my wrestling. My wrestling’s on a different level.” That it is. His wrestling, in fact, is what caught the eye of Bellator in the first place.
Asked by Cageside Press if he’d expected to finish Corrales off after the knockdown, he admitted that he had. “Yeah that’s just me being young. I thought I was just going to hit him again. But that’s where Henry’s good,” he explained. “That’s where we knew we needed to stay out of bad positions. He likes to be in the clinch and throw those bombs, those uppercuts. It’s a learning process, but yeah, I thought I was going to knock him out.”
As for his decision to face the media on Saturday, when he wasn’t required to, Pico explained that “that’s just what you do. It feels good when you win, the media’s always here when you win, and you’ve got to show your respect. You can’t just be, ‘hey why don’t you come out when everything’s good?'”
“When sh*t hits the fan, you gotta be a man,” he continued. Which means you “put your suit on and go face the media. That’s just what you do.”
Watch the full Bellator 214 post-fight press scrum with Aaron Pico above.
