Kayla Harrison says the neck surgery that pulled her out of her Amanda Nunes fight earlier this year left her doubting whether she’d ever feel like herself again. The UFC women’s bantamweight champion made the admission on the UFC’s Deep Waters show, her first public comments ahead of the rebooked title fight with Nunes at UFC 334, as reported by Bloody Elbow.
“This one was the most serious and I was kind of like, am I ever going to be okay again?” Harrison said. “It got to the point where I was questioning whether I was ever going to feel like myself again. But, I’m back.”
The backstory is rough. In January, Harrison withdrew from the Nunes fight 10 days before the first numbered event of the year after suffering a significant neck injury that required surgery. Her manager said the injury could have paralyzed her. That is a sentence nobody in this sport wants attached to a champion’s medical file.
Harrison framed the mental toll as the harder part. She pointed out that she went a full decade without surgery after reconstructive knee surgery between her two Olympics, and then had four procedures over the last four years. “It was such a big surgery and I went ten years without surgery,” she said, adding that the early stretch of recovery was rough, more mentally than physically.
According to Bloody Elbow, she was back in the gym quickly. The rescheduled bout is now the co-main event of UFC 334 on November 14 at Madison Square Garden in New York, underneath the heavyweight headliner between Ciryl Gane and Josh Hokit. Julianna Pena is also booked to return on the same night.
Nunes, ATT, and the Featherweight Question
The Nunes matchup carries some history. The two previously trained together at American Top Team, and Harrison has called the fight a major goal. It may also be her last. Harrison has suggested she could retire after UFC 334 unless the promotion agrees to reopen the featherweight division, so the stakes in New York stretch well past one belt.
She made it clear the paycheck isn’t what’s driving her. “I don’t need money,” Harrison said, and she added that the two could just as well settle it at American Top Team. “This is just for me. I want to go out there and see what I’m made of.”
My take: I believe her when she says she feels awesome, and I also know every fighter says that four weeks out. The surgery itself is in the rearview. The open question is the first time Nunes ties her up and yanks her head down in the clinch, because that’s the moment a fighter either trusts the repaired neck or flinches for half a second. Harrison has had nearly 10 months to rebuild that trust in the gym, which is a real camp’s worth of time. If she walks out of the first round without hesitating in those exchanges, I like her to keep the belt, and then the UFC gets to decide whether a featherweight division is worth keeping her around.
