Time for Pico vs Pitbull for the FW title

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Pico made his Bellator debut in 2017, that same year Pitbull reclaimed the FW title for the 2nd time.

Fast forward seven years and Pitbull has gone 10-1 at FW since then and has also competed up and down in weight for titles and has the FW belt right now.

Meanwhile Pico has gone 12-4 in that time and is on an eight fight win streak with six finishes if you ignore the one loss via injury.

This is a fight that is seven years in the making for hardcore fans.

Pitbull is now 36 and Pico is still just 27.

Kinda always felt like there would be a passing of the FW torch and it was always gonna be Pico and Father Time vs Patricio Pitbull by himself.

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It’s time - Pico has looked ready

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There was more hype around this kid 7- 8 years than there is around Bo Nickal.

Pico’s overall record against fighters who are relevant enough to have a Wikipedia page is 2-3.

A bit disappointing but he’s still young.

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I can’t shake the Corrales fight from my memory but he’s had 9 fights since then, definitely time to see what the kids got vs the Bellator GOAT

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He was a point away from being an Olympian at age 18 in wrestling and had a lifetime of boxing - the hype was real but his coaching was terrible.

With Bo nobody knew how his hands would be and his coaches are doing it the right way - taking is easy for his first 6 fights…

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Pico can’t take a solid punch

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He doesn’t have to if he followed a Khabib like gameplan.

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When Charles Oliveira was 27 (Pico’s age) he was 21-7 in MMA and losing back to back fights via guillotine down at FW.

Great fighters often lose a lot of fights, especially when they are young and green in MMA.

Hell, by 27 Overeem had lost 11 times and would go on to beat Werdum, Lesnar, JDS, Pavlovich etc…

I don’t care about wiki pages, Pico is one of the most dangerous FW’s on the planet now and would have trashed say Bryce Mitchell last night.

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Except Khabib has an iron chin and he has taken some hard shots and went right through them like nothing.

Pico will always have to deal with getting caught by a KO strike.

He could be winning the whole fight easily and get his lights shut off with 1 strike

Khabib didn’t have to worry about that.

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Fighting a Khabib style means going for a takedown instantly and grinding hard for a round and a half to sap the power from a striker…then standing up relatively fresh and box.

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“My advice is to develop,” Pico said. “There’s no rush. Everyone looks at Jon Jones as in, ‘I want to be the youngest (champion). I want to do this,’ but that’s an exception. That’s one guy. Your journey is different. I kind of made that mistake early on and said I want to be champion early on. This game is evolving so much and everyone is good. There’s no rush. You will be champion in due time – when the right time is for you.

“Take your time, (book the) right fights – because it’s a pain in the ass to get your confidence back. For me, I had to really dig deep and surround myself with good people and come back because my confidence was shot for a long time – and it’s coming back for sure.”

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Charles is a good comparison for early losses not being the fighter he is today. Would you favour Pico over Patricio if they fought today?

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If they fought today? Yes. I’d call Pico a slight favorite now. Patricio is 36 and just lost to Pettis at BW and then took a LW fight on short notice in Japan and got KOed.

I’ll also continue to favorite Pico more each year vs Patricio as Pico gets closer to 30 years old and Patricio gets further away from 30 and closer to 40.

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I missed that Japan fight altogether! I didn’t realize he got knocked out. That’s too bad…age catches up with the best of fighters though for sure.

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I still can’t believe Pico has 4 losses. I think he will be a UFC champion at some point but when he came in I thought he had a chance to be one of the goats

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Yeah I just saw the replay on youtube, didin’t watch the show. Patricio was in Japan to corner his brother in a fight and RIZIN approached him like four days before the show and I guess they offered him a boatload of money because they got him to fight a 24 year old killer up at LW on no notice.

Japanese promoters have pulled that on foreign fighters a lot, they got a guy they want to promote from Japan training like crazy and then they offer the American/Russian/Brazilian the fight last minute to increase the odds of a big upset win for the Japanese fighter. Been going forever, since the Pancrase days before PRIDE was even a thing.

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Wow. That’s brutal. It sucks that he got knocked out for his ongoing health and durability…but I guess that’s like a best case scenario for a loss in terms of determining if he lost a step. Not training the for fight and having zero gameplan…I see the fight was at 154lbs too. Must be near his walk around weight?

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I don’t know what his walk around weight was this summer. He had just spent all year getting ready to cut to 135 lbs for the first time because he fought Pettis for the BW title in June. So he was probably walking around a lot smaller than most of his FW career because he lost muscle this year to go after the BW title.

So we got a FW champ who cut all year go fight for BW title and then takes a LW fight on no notice.

Not a chance most UFC and Bellator champs would take these days but he probably got offered huge money to take that fight.

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Pico is much improved id like to see rematches on fights he lost I think he would avenge all of them with Boracs being the hardest

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