Bellator MMA is stacking the deck for its
return to San Jose, Calif., in April.
Per a report on Thursday by Marcel Dorff, and
a subsequent confirmation from one of the participants on Instagram, Aaron Pico
(9-3) will be setting foot in the Bellator cage on April 15 against
Jeremy
Kennedy (17-3, 1 NC). The featherweights will toe the line
inside the SAP Center in the promotion’s adopted hometown.
Additional, the organization released
a few more fights on the preliminary lineup, including a
middleweight tilt, a flyweight encounter and a bantamweight
scrap.
Pico finds himself on a five-fight win streak since falling short
to Henry
Corrales and Adam Borics
in 2019. A trio of finishes in 2020, an anaconda choke of Aiden Lee in
June 2021 and a three-round decision over Justin
Gonzales in November have led Pico to the No. 4 spot on
Bellator’s rankings list. Of note, the judges’ verdict over
Gonzales marked the first time the Jackson-Wink MMA product had
ever gone the distance, win or lose, as a pro. The Californian will
enter this fight with a high 89% stoppage rate, with all 12 of his
career outings taking place in the Bellator cage.
Ultimate Fighting Championship and Professional Fighters League vet Kennedy has
competed three times under the Bellator banner since joining the
league in 2020. Decisions over Matt
Bessette and Emmanuel
Sanchez bookend a unanimous decision defeat to Borics in April
2021. Throughout a career that began in 2013 — four years before
Pico set foot in a cage for the first time — Kennedy has defeated
the likes of Luis
Rafael Laurentino, Kyle
Bochniak and Steven
Siler over the years.
The other three matchups added to this card today are the
following: Theo Haig
(0-0) vs. Alan Benson
(1-2) at 185 pounds, flyweights Edwin De Los Dantos (1-0) and
Alberto
Martinez Mendez (0-1) battling it out, and finally, Robert
Seronio III (1-0) facing Calob
Ramirez (1-1) in a bantamweight clash.
Bellator 277 will go down at the SAP Center in San Jose, Calif., on
April 15. Two title fights buoy the event, with the night
concluding with a featherweight championship rematch between the
unbeaten A.J. McKee and
ex-champ Patricio
Freire. The co-headliner will bring Vadim
Nemkov, in search of his third title defense and a $1 million
check as the light heavyweight tournament victor, against ex-UFC
standout Corey
Anderson. The main card will also see Timothy
Johnson run it back with Tyrell
Fortune in a fight that first played out at the beginning of
2020.