It’s no secret that Kayla Harrison struggles mightily to make the 135-pound limit.
Harrison has fought professionally as high as 155 pounds and competed at 172 pounds in Judo. In order to make the Bantamweight limit — which is currently the heaviest female weight class the UFC offers — Harrison has to endure months of brutal dieting followed by a dangerous water cut. For Harrison, the challenge at the scale is as great as any she’s faced inside the Octagon.
As a UFC fighter, Harrison is undefeated
against both her opposition and the scale. However, the 35-year-old champion is loathe to make the cut many more times. She’s open to doing so once more to face Amanda Nunes in their highly anticipated (and delayed) super fight, and potentially a second time if Valentina Shevchenko wants to step up to the Bantamweight plate.
Otherwise? Harrison would rather retire than keep up such a severe cut, and she plans to tell the UFC as much.
“Yeah dude, that’s the plan,” Harrison told Jorge Masvidal when asked about opening up the Featherweight division. “They don’t know it, but once I f—k up Amanda, I’m just going to be like listen. I’m gonna ask them to make 145, so I can be more active. Unless Valentina wants to fight, because I know she’s a 125er, then I would cut down again. She’s a legacy fight, I’d fight her at 135.
“Other than that, if they don’t want to make a 145 [division], I’m going to say like thank you. It’s taking years off my life, I’m not going to lie to you.”
The problem here for Harrison is that UFC tried to keep a women’s Featherweight division operational while Nunes was the double champion. There were never more than a handful of fighters, so it was difficult for any contender to build experience or momentum before getting slaughtered by “The Lioness.” After the UFC nixed the division entirely, a lot of the best female Featherweights signed with PFL or Bellator … the exact promotion Harrison abandoned to join the UFC roster.
Maybe Harrison can make a strong argument and sway UFC brass, but it doesn’t feel likely that UFC reopens the Featherweight division after shuttering it so recently. In that case, Harrison’s UFC career is unlikely to last more than a year or two at most.
