Don't even think about asking Bellator star A.J McKee if he'd fight Aaron Pico
If you think you can goad A.J. McKee into starting some kind of lowkey beef with former teammate Aaron Pico, think again.
McKee (17-0 MMA, 17-0 BMMA) knows his next fight will be for the Bellator featherweight title after punching his ticket to the tournament final with a “Submission of the Year”-candidate finish of former bantamweight champion Darrion Caldwell in the Bellator 253 main event this past Thursday.
McKee will fight either champ Patricio Freire or Emmanuel Sanchez, who meet in the other semifinal fight likely sometime in early 2021. But one fighter McKee has no realistic interest in fighting down the line, whether he becomes a Bellator champ or not, is Pico (7-3 MMA, 7-3 BMMA).
As in: Forget about it. As in: Double middle fingers flying for even thinking he’d entertain it, even though they’re no longer Team Bodyshop teammates after Pico headed to Arizona for a fresh start.
“We both need $100 (million), and we’ll talk about it,” McKee said after his win over Caldwell this past Thursday at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn. “And I know y’all ain’t coughing up bread like that in MMA, so (middle fingers).”
Pico has had an up-and-down MMA career so far, but he’s without question back up these days. After a 24-second submission loss in his pro debut in 2017, he rattled off four straight first-round knockouts. Then he suffered back-to-back knockout losses in 2019.
But that’s all old news now that he has three straight stoppage wins. Most recently, he put away John DeJesus with a second-round knockout at Bellator 252 a week before McKee took out Caldwell.
McKee said the fact he goes back a long way with Pico makes all the difference. (And let’s face it: He’s right. There’s no shot both he and Pico are going to get $100 million each to fight each other.)
“Loyalty is royalty,” McKee said. “Even though he left (Team Bodyshop), that’s still my boy. It’s a childhood friend. (Expletive) all your entertainment. That’s my boy. It’s business: Yeah, understood. There are things, personally, that I know were going on (with Pico). I’m not going to expose his life and the reasons why he left, but it is what it is. That’s still my boy. He knows what it is.”
