Aaron Pico kicked off the UFC 333 main card Saturday at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi by stopping Losene Keita via TKO (punches) at 1:14 of Round 1. The official result came through the UFC News account on X, and MMA Junkie posted the same time and method moments later.
The featherweight opener didn’t give Keita much room to get comfortable. Henry Cejudo, watching along, wrote on X that it was an “Amazing game plan from Pico used his wrestling early on and then showed off the power,” which is a fair summary of how quickly the fight tilted. Pico put the wrestling threat in Keita’s head first, and once the punches started landing, the referee had seen enough. Tatiana Suarez chimed in on X too: “Ok Pico 🙌🏽👏🏼”
The finish moves Pico to 15-5. He entered the night ranked No. 12 at 145 pounds in the MMA Fighting Global Rankings, and his UFC run has had some turbulence. His debut against Lerone Murphy went badly, and he answered by grinding out a unanimous decision over fellow Bellator export Patricio Pitbull for his first UFC win. Before the move, he’d won nine of 10 across Bellator and the PFL. Pico has always been a finish-or-get-finished fighter, with only three of his first 19 pro fights reaching the scorecards, and this one won’t add to that total.
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Keita falls to 17-3. The former two-division Oktagon MMA champion took this fight on short notice after Arnold Allen withdrew with an injury, and he came in with real momentum. After dropping a close split decision to Nathaniel Wood in his UFC debut, he flattened Muhammadjon Naimov in the first round of his second outing. A win here likely would have gotten him a ranking. Instead he heads back to the drawing board after a short-notice step up against a ranked opponent, which is about the hardest assignment the matchmakers hand out.
The card had already been rolling before the main card even started. Dominick Reyes, Abdul Rakhman Yakhyaev and Abus Magomedov closed the prelims with three consecutive first-round finishes, and Pico kept that streak alive on the Paramount+ broadcast.
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No next opponent has been announced in the sources. With a ranked win over Pitbull and now a fast stoppage of a dangerous short-notice replacement, Pico has a reasonable case for a bump up the featherweight ladder.
My take: this is the version of Pico people have been waiting on since he signed with Bellator as a teenage prospect with an Olympic-level wrestling pedigree attached to his name. The Murphy loss looked like a fighter trying to win every exchange with his hands. What Cejudo spotted is the adjustment that matters. When Pico makes opponents worry about the takedown first, the right hand lands on a guy whose weight is already shifting to defend, and that’s how you get a 74-second night against someone who just knocked out Naimov. Two wins in a row, both built on wrestling in different ways. I’d put him in with someone in the top 10 next, and I’d pick him.
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