MMA Fighting Global Rankings<\/a> and possibly one highlight-reel performance away from a title shot. The English standout holds notable wins over Josh Emmett, Dan Ige, and Edson Barboza, among others, but still seeks to place an exclamation point on his contender statement.<\/p>\nMaking his UFC debut, Pico (13-4) has plenty of hype behind him, just like when he made his pro debut with Bellator at 20 with zero amateur MMA experience. Pico recently parted ways with the PFL to jump promotions and now the pressure is on him to prove that he\u2019s capable of more than just styling on lesser known competition. Now 17 fights into his career, Pico has gone to the scorecards only twice and has never lost by decision.<\/p>\n
Check out the UFC 319 live blog for Lerone Murphy vs. Aaron Pico below.<\/p>\n
Round 1: Referee Herb Dean handles the co-main event. Pico immediately takes the center of the octagon. He jabs Murphy, Murphy fires back but is off-balance and Pico capitalizes with a hard punch. He looks to follow up, but doesn\u2019t overextend, and now he\u2019s wrestling with Murphy against the fence. Murphy breaks that up quickly. Pico with a trademark body shot. Murphy answers with an elbow, then goes for a choke, but Pico is out of it and he\u2019s on top now. Murphy fights back to the feet. Pico secures a body lock and gets another takedown, Murphy again quick to recover. An aggressive Pico walks right into a high knee from Murphy. Straight right by Pico. Spinning back elbow from Murphy and Pico is OUT COLD.<\/p>\n
Back-to-back spinning elbow KOs??? What is happening??????<\/p>\n
Official result: Lerone Murphy def. Aaron Pico via KO (spinning back elbow) (R1, 3:21)<\/p>\n
Murphy says this is the statement he needed and he\u2019s ready for a title shot. \u201cLet\u2019s go, Volkanovski!\u201d<\/p>\n
He praises Pico, saying that might have been the hardest first few minutes of a fight he\u2019s ever had. But he knew Pico\u2019s aggression would work against him.<\/p>\n
Dana White issues another $50K guarantee, this time for Murphy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is the UFC 319 live blog for Lerone Murphy vs. Aaron Pico, the co-main event featherweight bout…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":["post-75606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75606","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=75606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}