Kayla Harrison has heard enough from Demetrious Johnson. The UFC women’s bantamweight champion went after the former champion over his recent remarks about Natalia Silva and Wang Cong, in comments Ariel Helwani shared on X on Wednesday. Bloody Elbow characterized Johnson’s remarks as talking down on women’s MMA, and Harrison didn’t bother softening her response.
“I’m just kind of over Mighty’s attitude. I’m over it,” Harrison said.
Her complaint went past one bad take. Harrison called it a “mindset of scarcity” and said that thinking is “detrimental to the growth of the sport.” She argued that nobody has to belittle or mock other fighters to build their own brand, because there’s room for everyone to eat. She also conceded Silva and Wang aren’t stars yet, which is a fair admission. Then she laid out how she thinks that changes: you “put them in the main event, and you build them.” Her verdict on Johnson’s commentary was two words: “Super unnecessary.”
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Harrison’s own big night is close
The timing matters, because Harrison is less than a month out from the biggest fight of her career. She defends her title against Amanda Nunes in the co-main event of UFC 334 on November 14 at Madison Square Garden, underneath the Ciryl Gane vs. Josh Hokit heavyweight title fight. The Nunes fight was originally targeted for earlier this year, but neck surgery pushed it back.
Harrison told Uncrowned she’s dealt with five herniated discs for a long stretch of her career. She said she spent all of December with numbness down her arm and no feeling in three fingers, then lost strength in her right arm. An MRI showed the last two of those discs were completely blocking the nerve. After surgery, she spent eight weeks in a neck brace and wasn’t allowed to lift more than 20 pounds. She admitted there were moments she wondered if she was done.
She’s 36 now, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, and she told Uncrowned the Nunes fight could be her last. “I could walk away tomorrow and be fine and have peace,” she said, before adding, half joking, that a $10 million per fight offer would make her think. Nunes, for her part, hasn’t fought in over three years, as Ben Fowlkes pointed out in his Yahoo Sports mailbag. Alex Pereira has even argued publicly that Nunes vs. Harrison deserved to headline UFC 334 over Gane vs. Hokit.
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Quick take
Harrison is right on the mechanics, and I say that as someone who has spent a lot of hours defending fighters the casual audience swore were boring. Nobody walks into the UFC as a draw. Fans learn who to care about through placement, promotion and reps on the big stage, and you can’t ask a fighter to already be a star before you hand her the slot that makes stars. Johnson knows the job of a commentator better than most, which is why taking easy shots at two fighters who haven’t been given that runway lands as cheap. The best argument Harrison has is the one she gets to make on November 14, in a co-main that a former two-division champion thinks should have been the main event.
