{"id":505295,"date":"2026-02-28T13:16:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T13:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/505295\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T13:16:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T13:16:17","slug":"ufc-books-the-long-anticipated-bellator-matchup-that-never-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/505295\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC books the long-anticipated Bellator matchup that never happened"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two fighters that were long destined for a matchup under the Bellator banner will finally get to square off \u2013 in the UFC.<\/p>\n<p>Former Bellator double champion Patricio Freire will face Aaron Pico at UFC 327, UFC CEO Dana White announced Friday evening. The event takes place April 11 at Kaseya Center in Miami.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Freire (37-8 MMA, 1-1 UFC) has split his UFC appearances with a debut unanimous decision loss to Yair Rodriguez followed by a unanimous decision win over Dan Ige. Freire&#8217;s tiebreaker was supposed to be in September, but opponent Losene Keita missed weight and &#8220;Pitbull&#8221; elected not to fight at a disadvantage.<\/p>\n<p>Pico (13-5 MMA, 0-1 UFC) has been in the international spotlight before his first MMA contract was signed. Propped up as the next big thing, Pico signed with Bellator before his debut. The public saw him hit highs and lows, and grow before their eyes.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to Bellator evaporation following its merger with PFL, the Scott Coker-run promotion seemed to be slowly aligning Freire and Pico for an eventual showdown.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>However, both fighters departed PFL for the UFC. Pico debuted in August and was knocked out in the first round by Lerone Murphy.<\/p>\n<p>The updated UFC 327 lineup includes:<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Jiri Prochazka vs. Carlos Ulberg \u2013 for vacant light heavyweight title<\/p>\n<p class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mmajunkie.usatoday.com\/fighters\/joshua-van\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Joshua Van;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Joshua Van<\/a> vs. Tatsuro Taira \u2013 for flyweight title<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Curtis Blaydes vs. Josh Hokit<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Beneil Dariush vs. Manuel Torres<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Dominick Reyes vs. Johnny Walker<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Paulo Costa vs. Azamat Murzakanov<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Patricio Freire vs. Aaron Pico<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Mateusz Gamrot vs. Esteban Ribovics<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Nate Landwehr vs. Cub Swanson<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Randy Brown vs. Kevin Holland<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Kelvin Gastelum vs. Vicente Luque<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Loopy Godinez vs. Tatiana Suarez<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Christopher Alvidrez vs. Francisco Prado<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: <a href=\"https:\/\/mmajunkie.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/ufc\/2026\/02\/27\/ufc-327-bellator-patricio-pitbull-friere-vs-aaron-pico\/88307308007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:UFC books the long-anticipated Bellator matchup that never happened;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">UFC books the long-anticipated Bellator matchup that never happened<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two fighters that were long destined for a matchup under the Bellator banner will finally get to square&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[35891,1857,49,48,10359,641,638,7907,82,640,11281],"class_list":["post-505295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-aaron-pico","tag-bellator","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dana-white","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-patricio-freire","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-yair-rodriguez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}