Kayla Harrison responded on X early Friday to a viral post about the darkest stretch of her life, the years when she was a teenage judoka writing “God, please end my life.” in her journal. Her reply was short: “God is good and I’m glad he didn’t answer that prayer. 🤍”
The thread she quoted, posted by the account @JKFortySeven, walks through the story Harrison has told publicly before, including in a book where she published those journal pages. According to the post, Harrison started judo at six in Middletown, Ohio, and at eight was taken on by a coach named Daniel Doyle, who sexually abused her for years. She kept it hidden until a car ride home from a tournament, when she told a friend, who pulled over and made her call her mother. The post says her mom went to Doyle’s house with a baseball bat and wrecked his truck, then went to the police. The FBI got involved, and Doyle pleaded guilty and received 10 years.
Within a month Harrison was sent to a dojo in Massachusetts run by Jimmy Pedro and his father, Big Jim. The thread says she hated it there and considered running away, quitting and suicide, until Big Jim sat with her on some steps after a morning run and told her the abuse happened to her but didn’t define her. She has called that the turning point.
View post on X
What came after is one of the deepest resumes in combat sports. The post lists a 2010 world title, Olympic gold in London in 2012 (the first American to win judo gold) and again in Rio in 2016, more than 60 judo gold medals and induction into six halls of fame. After a stretch with no goals, she moved to MMA and won the PFL’s $1 million tournament in 2019, then won it again the same week she announced she’d adopted her niece and nephew after her mother’s stroke and her stepfather’s death.
In the UFC she beat Holly Holm at UFC 300, then Ketlen Vieira, then submitted Julianna Peña with a kimura at UFC 316 to take the bantamweight title in her third fight with the promotion. Amanda Nunes walked into the cage that night, and the fight was booked for January. Two weeks out, per the thread, Harrison lost function in her arm, flew alone to New York for surgery and came out with a neck fusion after five herniated discs, followed by eight weeks in a brace.
She’s now 36 and 19-1, undefeated in the UFC, and she meets Nunes on Saturday, Nov. 14, at Madison Square Garden in the UFC 334 main event.
My take: the story is heavier than any fight, and Harrison has earned the right to say she’s already satisfied with her career. The fight question that interests me is mechanical. The Peña kimura came off the kind of top control she’s built on since she was a kid on a judo mat, and everything she does starts with clinch entries and grips. A fused neck takes head pressure and collar ties in the clinch, so watch the first two minutes of Round 1. If she’s hand fighting for grips without hesitating, the surgery is behind her.
