Melissa Croden has a theory about how Kayla Harrison vs. Amanda Nunes ends, and it involves either a retirement or a resurrected weight class.
The ranked Canadian bantamweight, speaking with MMA Canada ahead of her UFC Edmonton fight against Chelsea Chandler, said the conversation at her gym has already jumped past fight night. Her read, per the interview: a Harrison win sends Kayla lobbying the UFC to open the featherweight division back up so she can be a double champ. A Nunes win sends Amanda back into retirement.
“Then if Amanda wins, she’s going to retire again, which, I think everybody would assume that,” Croden said.
The fight is a re-booking, set for UFC 334 in November with the bantamweight title on the line. Harrison’s side of the stakes has been framed in legacy terms, too. MMA Sucka ran it under the headline that Harrison eyes GOAT status with a Nunes win, which is about as plain as a career goal gets.
The Neck, the Layoff, the Coin Flip
Croden didn’t pretend to know who wins. She just picked up a betting-picks gig with sponsor Cloud Bet and admitted, laughing, that she’s bad at it. “Like, do not listen to me,” she said, before calling the fight a 50-50.
The uncertainty she kept circling was Harrison’s health. Croden pointed to a serious neck injury, said she believed it was something like a fractured vertebrae that needed surgery, and wondered aloud whether Harrison comes back the same fighter. She wasn’t sure of the specifics, and she said so.
“Like a neck injury is no freaking joke, man,” Croden said. “Like my neck is sore all the time. I can’t imagine having fractured vertebrae.”
She still gave Harrison credit for her approach to rehab, saying Kayla seems to have a good head on her shoulders. On the other side, she called Nunes the women’s pound-for-pound GOAT “for a reason” while describing Harrison as a huge obstacle, and said the bigger question is how Nunes chooses to approach her.
Nunes is coming back to competition herself. Her last fight, fittingly for a conversation happening around a Canadian card, also took place in Canada. So you have two elite fighters returning from time away, one of them off a surgically repaired neck, in a title fight that already got booked once. Croden’s summary was the honest one: nobody knows until they see it.
Bantamweight Is Hiring
Croden also took a swing at the division’s depth. She said the UFC knows bantamweight is shallow and is signing a lot of women now. Two years ago, she said, her manager pitched her for the Contender Series and got told there were no bantamweights that year, and that she was too old.
“So I’m like could have had me like two years ago, man,” she said.
My take: Croden’s gym-floor bracket is probably right on both counts, and that’s the problem for 135. If Nunes wins and walks again, the belt goes back into a division the UFC is still restocking. If Harrison wins and goes chasing a 145 title that doesn’t currently have a home, bantamweight loses its champion’s attention too. Either way, the women the UFC is signing right now should start sharpening up, because the top of the ladder could be wide open by the end of November.
