Amanda Nunes took less than a day to decide what the loss meant, and she didn’t need many words to say it. On Sunday, roughly 15 hours after Kayla Harrison submitted her in Round 4 at UFC 334, Nunes posted her first public reaction on Instagram Stories: “Sh*t happens,” she wrote. “Back in the game.”
That second line is the one people will read twice. MMA Junkie, via Yahoo Sports, reported that Nunes left the Octagon at Madison Square Garden without doing her post-fight interview with Joe Rogan and then skipped backstage media entirely. She also took her gloves off after the bout before heading to the locker room, a gesture that set off speculation about whether she saw the defeat as a sign her best days were gone. Her post suggests she doesn’t.
How it ended
The loss drops Nunes to 23-6 overall and 16-3 in the UFC. Harrison moves to 20-1 and stays perfect in the promotion at 4-0. The finish came in Round 4, and THE MMA GURU, posting on X as it happened, called it a rear-naked choke. He was also scathing about how Nunes got there, arguing on X that Harrison had looked poor for most of every round before Nunes gave away positions late. MMA Junkie’s account was more measured but pointed the same direction, describing several strategic errors that led to her downfall.
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This was the fight people had wanted for years. Nunes and Harrison were once teammates at American Top Team, and the matchup carried the weight of that shared room. It was also Nunes’s first appearance since June 2023, when she retired after defending her title against Irene Aldana. She came back for one opponent in particular, and for most of fight week she looked relaxed about it. At the Thursday press conference she was laughing along with Josh Hokit’s crude one-liner, and by Saturday’s weight cut she and Kevin Holland were still joking about it, according to footage the UFC shared and Championship Rounds posted on X.
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What’s next
The door to a second fight was open before Nunes ever posted. Both Harrison and UFC CEO Dana White expressed interest in a rematch in the immediate aftermath of UFC 334, per MMA Junkie. No date or event has been announced.
My take: run it back. A 23-6 former two-division champion who came off a layoff of more than three years, by most accounts held her own for long stretches, and lost the fight on decisions she made late is a fighter with a specific, fixable problem. That is the most interesting kind of loss in this sport. Harrison earned the win, and she clearly wants the rematch too, which tells you she knows how close the first one felt. Nunes walked past Rogan and the press on Saturday night. On Sunday she picked up her phone and said she was staying. The next time she sees Harrison across the cage, I’d bet she does the talking afterward.
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