Dustin Poirier thinks Aaron Pico can be a UFC champion. The former interim lightweight titleholder said Pico has “all the attributes” to win a belt, according to MMA Sucka, which put the comment front and center on Saturday night.
That is a heavy endorsement coming from Poirier, who spent years in the deepest waters the lightweight division had to offer. He went three times with Conor McGregor, a trilogy that ended at UFC 264 when McGregor’s leg broke. He also knocked out Benoit Saint-Denis in the second round at UFC 299. When a fighter with that résumé looks at a featherweight and sees a champion, people in the sport tend to listen.
The timing makes sense. At UFC 333 on Oct. 24, Pico dropped Losene Keita in 74 seconds, as Bloody Elbow noted when Keita later broke his silence about the loss. Keita came into the fight as a betting underdog and took it on shorter notice, according to MMA Mania’s weekly mailbag. Jesse Holland’s verdict there was blunt: everyone watched Keita, and they watched him get destroyed.
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Where the division sits
The featherweight title stayed put on that same card. Alexander Volkanovski, 38 and fighting through a head cold, flu symptoms and a chest infection during fight week in Abu Dhabi, finished the previously undefeated Movsar Evloev in the second round to keep his belt. Yahoo Sports reported he refused even ibuprofen. Since then, Volkanovski has been teasing a champ vs. champ fight, and the MMA Mania staff debated whether he or Arman Tsarukyan should get first crack at Justin Gaethje’s lightweight title.
That leaves a crowded line behind him at 145. MMA Mania’s Alex Behunin floated one possibility, writing that he thinks the UFC will rebook Evloev against Pico next and calling it an awful matchup for Evloev. Behunin also wrote that Pico, at his best, is UFC champion caliber, which lines up neatly with Poirier’s view.
Not everyone is sold. Thomas Myers, in the same mailbag, admitted he is not a Pico fan and said he doesn’t trust Pico’s chin or fight IQ. Nothing has been officially booked for Pico, and no date has been announced.
My take
I’m wary of crowning anyone off a 74-second knockout of an underdog who took the fight on short notice, and Poirier didn’t really do that. Having the attributes and holding the belt are separated by a lot of hard rounds. Pico has already shown he can end a fight fast. What he hasn’t shown yet is how he handles someone like Evloev, who can drag a fight into the deep water and make you live there for 15 minutes. If the UFC books that one, Poirier’s endorsement gets tested for real, and Myers’ worries about the chin and the fight IQ get tested right alongside it. That’s the fight I want, and with Volkanovski’s own plans up in the air, it might be the fastest honest route to finding out which of them is right.
