Aaron Pico would like to clear something up, and then he’d like to fight Lerone Murphy again.
The featherweight told MMA Junkie’s Mike Bohn that his remarks after UFC 333 were “no shots fired” at anybody. Then he named the guy he actually wants. Pico said he’d love to rematch Murphy, the only fighter to beat him in the UFC. His reasoning took two sentences: “It puts me closer to fighting for a title. And I know I can beat him.”
That’s a pretty clean pitch. It also contains no trash talk, which tracks with a guy who just spent part of his week explaining that he wasn’t trying to start anything.
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Where everybody stands
Pico earned the right to ask. At UFC 333 he stopped Losene Keita in just over a minute, about as efficient a night as the division saw in October. It didn’t move him in the Combat Press November rankings, where he sits at No. 9 at 145 pounds. Murphy is two spots ahead at No. 7.
The gap looks wider on the UFC Meta Rankings that MMA Mania published this week. There, Murphy is No. 3 behind only Movsar Evloev and Diego Lopes, while Pico checks in at No. 10. Depending on whose list you trust, Pico is asking to climb either two rungs or seven. That’s the whole appeal of the fight from his side.
The top of the division also got shaken up on the same card. Alexander Volkanovski handed Evloev his first professional loss with a second-round stoppage at UFC 333, defending the featherweight title again and passing José Aldo for the most title-fight wins in the division’s history. With Evloev no longer unbeaten, the line of contenders behind Volkanovski looks a lot less settled than it did a month ago, and Murphy is standing near the front of it.
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No bout has been booked, and Murphy hasn’t publicly responded to Pico’s interest in anything I’ve seen.
Quick take
I like Pico’s math more than I like his odds of getting a yes. Rematches in this sport usually happen because the loser improved or the first fight left an argument on the table, and from Murphy’s chair the case for taking this one is thin. He already holds the win. He’s ranked higher on both lists. Beating Pico a second time gets him roughly the same thing he got the first time, while losing to him would hand a No. 9 or No. 10 guy his spot right as Evloev’s loss opened a door near the top. If I’m in Murphy’s camp, I’m asking for Lopes or whoever looks like the next title challenger and letting Pico go knock out somebody in the six-through-eight range first. Pico’s quote is honest, though, and I’ll give him that. “It puts me closer to fighting for a title” is the most truthful callout anyone at 145 has made all fall. It also tells you exactly why Murphy has no reason to answer the phone.
