I never once compared Pico to those guys. They were much more established and with title runs in other organizations who fought much tougher fighters than Pico. Who was comparing him to Alvarez, Rockhold, Jacare and Alvarez? Those guys weren't prospects.
And yes, the UFC does give tough matchups to their prospects with some outliers, like you mentioned. Maybe we're looking at the term "thrown to the wolves" differently? You're caught up on a lot of semantics here and are definitely a follower and fan of Pico, but you're adding your own slant to this, lol.