{"id":146372,"date":"2025-09-16T02:32:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T02:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/146372\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T02:32:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T02:32:07","slug":"fine-tuning-is-infinite-aaron-pico-gets-advice-from-ranked-ufc-contender-who-lost-via-spinning-back-elbow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/146372\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Fine-tuning is infinite&#8221; Aaron Pico gets advice from ranked UFC contender who lost via spinning back elbow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Aaron Pico has had many talking about his spinning back elbow knockout loss at UFC 319. But a fighter who lost to that same technique and has since become a ranked UFC contender has offered the former Bellator MMA star some advice on how to bounce back from that kind of defeat.<\/p>\n<p>That referenced fighter is Aiemann Zahabi. The Canadian combatant will take on former UFC bantamweight title challenger Marlon \u2018Chito\u2019 Vera at UFC Vancouver. This battle of ranked bantamweight contenders occurs on October 18th. Zahabi appeared on MMA Canada to cover several subjects ahead of that key bout.<\/p>\n<p>The Tristar product was not always the number ten-ranked bantamweight contender in the promotion though. In fact, Zahabi has rebounded impressively from a spinning back elbow KO loss to Ricardo Ramos at UFC 217. Though he did have a subsequent loss after UFC 217 on points to Vince Morales,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bjpenn.com\/mma-news\/aiemann-zahabi\/ufc-contender-would-love-mandel-nallo-on-ufc-vancouver-hes-really-mastered-a-lot-of-the-elements-of-fighting\/?utm_source=rss&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=ufc-contender-would-love-mandel-nallo-on-ufc-vancouver-hes-really-mastered-a-lot-of-the-elements-of-fighting\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Aiemann Zahabi<\/a> has now put together a six-fight win streak in the octagon.<\/p>\n<p>Considering this context and what advice Aiemann Zahabi would give to Aaron Pico in this rebuilding process after that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bjpenn.com\/mma-news\/dricus-du-plessis\/dricus-du-plessis-teammate-expects-ddp-2-0-vs-khamzat-chimaev-at-ufc-319\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UFC 319<\/a> loss to Lerone Murphy, Zahabi said,<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah. Well, listen, I think in my opinion, Aaron Pico is a very well-rounded fighter when it comes to wrestling skills, boxing skills, jiu-jitsu skills. He\u2019s got aces in all of these categories. Physical conditioning through the roof, mental toughness, fortitude, willingness to fight, courage, he has everything that it takes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay, this is like, you know, 90% of all the problems are solved. Okay, now it\u2019s like what are the decisions you\u2019re making in the octagon? you know, maybe he could have won that round letting the fight breathe a little more, you know. Because he was doing so well, you know, and I\u2019m not saying, you know, play it safe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat I\u2019m saying is you score, you take a breath, you let the guy do his reaction, you come back. But he kept staying on him like glue at all times. And you know, it\u2019s hard to do that in the top 10. You know, I get it, outside guys just signed to the UFC off The Ultimate Fighter. You want to dominate them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou want to crush them. But guys who\u2019ve proven to be top contenders, they\u2019re not breakable. Like it\u2019s hard to just dismantle them with pressure because they\u2019ve seen a lot of things. They\u2019ve fought a lot of guys. They have many years of experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey probably are close to you in wrestling, grappling, and striking, and they don\u2019t panic anymore, right? So, sometimes you got to let things play out, like you got to be in there. You got to make something happen. You got to let; to see, you know; because they\u2019re also adapting for you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, at the highest level, you know, [Floyd] Mayweather said it best, the greatest champions adapt to anything. All right? So, you can\u2019t expect [the] fight to continue the same way. So, I knew like; let\u2019s say when I\u2019m fighting a guy like [Jose] Aldo, whatever happened in round one, it may not come back in round two.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Aiemann Zahabi on Aaron Pico: \u201cI would love for us to work together\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As he continued to expound upon Aaron Pico\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NJc8xQy3KPE\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UFC debut in Chicago<\/a> and what the road ahead could look like, Zahabi continued,<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt may not. whatever happens in round two may not be round three. You know, like there; they could be individual; every round is an individual fight in a way because they go back to their corner, they\u2019re going to get advice, they might change things around completely, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, I just think that, you know, maybe if he scales back the aggression and it\u2019s easy to criticize, you know, we\u2019re outside looking in. He could have knocked him out. I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t know. And I\u2019m not judging. I\u2019m not judging.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut if I were just to give him advice because I, you know; we have mutual friends and I would love to train with him and I would love for us to work together. He seems like a great guy. I was just like, you know, sometimes taper off, come back on, taper off, come back on, you know, like stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause, you know, you watch The Fighting Nerds, The Fighting Nerds, they have a great like; they put on the action, they whoop, they take a second, they step back, they see what\u2019s going on, they put the action again, and then they finish the guy. It\u2019s incredible, their mix of the things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd I feel like we all need help. Like I need help. I need work on that, too. Like maybe it\u2019s, I need to [have] more aggression, you know? Maybe it means take more risk. You know, everyone needs to; we\u2019re always dialing in. You know, if perfection is unreachable, then fine-tuning is infinite.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are; we can all be criticized. That\u2019s why like, you know, if he hears this, I don\u2019t want him to think it as a judgment. It\u2019s more like we all need things and he\u2019s going to see things about my game that he can tell me about. You know, we all need refinement.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aaron Pico has had many talking about his spinning back elbow knockout loss at UFC 319. But a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[4972,99039,64,63,786,785,85,787,37546,99040],"class_list":{"0":"post-146372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-aaron-pico","9":"tag-aiemann-zahabi","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-fighting","13":"tag-mma","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-ufc","16":"tag-ufc-319","17":"tag-ufc-vancouver"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}