Kayla Harrison defends the UFC bantamweight title against Amanda Nunes on Saturday, Nov. 14, in the UFC 334 co-main event at Madison Square Garden. My pick is Harrison, on the mat, and comfortably. People will call it boring. Those people will be watching the wrong part of the fight.
Start with the betting menu, because it already tells you how this fight works. FanDuel has Harrison at -196 and Nunes at +152. Harrison’s shortest method is submission at +200, with decision at +280 and a knockout way out at +800. Nunes’s shortest is TKO/KO at +300, and her submission price is a cartoonish +2500. The market has drawn the map for us. Nunes needs the right hand. Harrison needs the floor. Whoever controls where the fight happens wins it.
The chain is the point
Harrison is an Olympic judo gold medalist who has been fitted with MMA skills at American Top Team, and her genius is in sequence. She doesn’t need a single entry to work. She needs Nunes to answer the first one.
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Picture it. Harrison closes to the clinch and pins Nunes on the fence. Nunes does the right thing and fights the hands, so Harrison switches to a body lock. Nunes widens her base to stop the trip, so Harrison drags her laterally off the cage. If Nunes sits to a knee and builds back up, Harrison is already on her hip looking for the back. Every link in that chain can fail and still win, because every defense costs Nunes something. Brian Fitzgerald noted in his MMA Mania preview that long stretches of wrestling tired Nunes even at her peak. She is now in her late 30s and three years removed from her last fight.
Then comes the part the critics can’t see. Once Harrison is on top, the fight becomes a series of small, violent arguments over wrists, hips and head position. She settles her weight, takes the underhook, puts a shoulder across the jaw and makes Nunes carry her for every second. That’s how power gets neutralized. A right hand like Nunes’s comes from the floor through the hips. Flat on your back, with an Olympian’s chest on yours and your far arm trapped, you have neither the floor nor the hips. You’re throwing with your shoulder, and Harrison will take that trade 100 times out of 100.
I’ve lost patience with the lay and pray complaint for exactly this reason. Holding a two-division champion with legitimate jiu-jitsu on her back, while advancing and landing, is the hardest job in the sport. Nunes has “some slick jiu-jitsu,” as the MMA Mania preview put it, so Harrison will have to earn every pass. Doing it for five minutes against someone trying to explode out from under you is wrestling at full intensity, and the person on the bottom is losing more than a round.
The best case for Nunes
The strongest counterargument is real. Larissa Pacheco outlasted Harrison at 145 pounds in the PFL, the cut to 135 is harder, and a patient Nunes working a body jab and straight right to the torso while staying off the fence could drag Harrison into deep water and catch her tired. Jamie Theodosi at Bloody Elbow picked Nunes by decision on that logic, writing that Nunes “is quite clearly the better striker in this matchup.” He’s right about the striking.
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That game plan also asks a 30-something coming out of a three-year retirement to circle and pivot with fresh legs for 25 minutes. The MMA Mania preview says Nunes walked away because of severe leg pain. Pacheco was an active fighter in rhythm. Nunes hasn’t been in an Octagon since before Harrison arrived, and the first time she plants to fire that right hand, she’ll be standing still for Harrison’s entry. The Pacheco blueprint required staying power, and staying power is the thing three years off steals first.
Nunes doesn’t sound worried. Speaking to reporters including Cageside Press on Wednesday, she said, “I’m not here today as a challenger. I’m here today as a double champion still.” I respect the confidence. Confidence won’t help her get her hips off the mat in Round 2.
Two honest worries remain. Harrison had neck surgery after withdrawing from UFC 324 in January, and the fight was pushed 10 months. A surgically repaired neck matters most when you’re defending, though, and Harrison’s whole plan is to never be the one defending. The weight cut scares me more. Few things in this sport annoy me like a fighter gassing because the scale took her legs, and Harrison’s struggles making 135 are well documented. If she looks drained on fight night, I’ll own this pick.
The room mostly agrees with me. Four of five Bloody Elbow staffers took Harrison, and MMA Mania picked her by submission. She has fought twice in the UFC, finished two former champions and won the belt along the way.
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And if this goes to the cards, I’d ask the judges for one thing. Score the control and the damage accurately, and keep the 10-8 rounds for rounds that are actually one-sided. Clean scoring will favor Harrison anyway.
Prediction: Harrison by submission, Round 3, after two rounds of Nunes paying rent from the bottom.
