Kayla Harrison is still the UFC women’s bantamweight champion. She submitted Amanda Nunes with a rear-naked choke at 1:29 of Round 4 in the UFC 334 co-main event Saturday at Madison Square Garden, ending the first fight of Nunes’ comeback after 1,253 days away.
It did not start like a Harrison fight. Nunes landed heavy right hands and leg kicks early, and per the MMA Fighting live blog the champion was feeling them as she chased the clinch. Cageside Press noted Harrison was spitting blood before she finally ducked a punch, landed a takedown and followed with a judo throw into the crucifix. She rained unanswered left hands until the horn. The round split the media scorers. MMA Fighting gave it to Nunes, MMA Weekly to Harrison.
Round 2 was the strange one. Nunes came out smiling and started shooting takedowns on a woman with two Olympic gold medals in judo, a decision Bloody Elbow said left commentator Joe Rogan bemused. Nunes did drag Harrison down once, but Harrison popped up, hit the same throw from the opening round and parked Nunes in the crucifix again. Nunes had her best grappling stretch in Round 3, reversing a throw attempt, taking mount (Harrison grabbed the cage and drew a warning from referee Blake Grice) and later taking the back. She slipped off the top, and Harrison opened a cut over her right eye with an elbow in the final minute. In Round 4, Nunes landed a hard left, then Harrison caught a leg, tripped her and took the back the moment Nunes tried to scramble up. The tap came quickly.
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MMA Fighting listed the records at 20-1 for Harrison and 23-6 for Nunes. The two are former teammates, and the fight had been booked once before. Harrison withdrew from their UFC 324 co-main event in January with a neck injury that needed surgery, and Yahoo Sports reported that at one point this year she wasn’t cleared to lift 20 pounds. Saturday was her first fight since winning the belt in June 2025, a 17-month gap. Nunes, 38, had retired after beating Irene Aldana at UFC 289 in June 2023.
“I think I’m still in shock,” Harrison said afterward. She also said, “I’ve got a lot of decisions to make when I get home,” and MMA Fighting raised the possibility that this was her last fight. Nobody has said yet whether Nunes plans to keep going.
Henry Cejudo, who had picked the finish, wrote on X: “I told you guys Kayla by submission.” Brazilian reporter Guilherme Cruz wrote on X that Nunes was the better fighter standing and that agreeing to a grappling match with a much stronger two-time Olympic judo champion was a hard decision to explain.
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Cruz is right, and the frustrating part is that Nunes had the answer in the first four minutes. Every time she kept range she won the exchanges, and every time she tied up she ended up under Harrison’s hips with an arm pinned. Wrestling with a judoka to steal rounds is a real plan on paper. In practice, it handed Harrison the two crucifix rounds that decided this fight. Harrison deserves credit for the adjustment Nunes never made. After eating those right hands in Round 1, she stopped walking straight in and started catching kicks and timing level changes, and the fight-ending trip came off exactly that. Whether she fights again is now Harrison’s call, and she’ll make it holding the belt.
