Reputed MMA analyst shares his concern for Kayla Harrison's brutal weight cuts ahead of her UFC 316 title fight!
Weight cutting in MMA has always been a brutal part of the sport. Fighters push their bodies to dangerous limits just to make the scale. Some cuts are tough, others are downright scary to watch. Kayla Harrison’s drop to bantamweight falls into the scary category. The two-time Olympic judo champion has been forcing herself down to 135 pounds for her UFC run. Anyone who has seen her knows this isn’t natural for her body type.
Harrison dominated the PFL lightweight division for years at a much more comfortable weight. She looked like a tank rolling through opponents at 155 pounds. Her judo throws were crisp, her ground game was suffocating, and she moved like an athlete in her prime. Then the UFC came calling, and suddenly she had to squeeze into a weight class 20 pounds below her usual. The bantamweight division was her only option if she wanted to chase UFC gold. Unfortunately, that meant putting her health on the line every single fight camp.
Luke Thomas, one of MMA’s most respected voices, didn’t mince words about Harrison’s situation. He watched her struggle through multiple weight cuts and decided someone needed to speak up. Thomas described Harrison as “a tank of a person” when she is walking around at her natural weight. Seeing her try to shrink down to 135 pounds makes him genuinely worried about her wellbeing.
“If you’ve ever seen Kayla in person, before she was trying to make 135, just like a natural walking around, she’s a tank. I cannot believe she could find a way to get to 135. This has to be doing unbelievable amounts of damage… This is not sustainable. She cannot keep this up…She’s leaving a lot, athletically, on the table. It’s why to me, she kinda moves almost a little slow at this weight class. But she’s, I mean, she’s truly killing herself to get down here.”
Thomas has covered MMA for years and seen plenty of brutal weight cuts. When someone with his experience sounds alarm bells, people should listen. He pointed out that even 145 pounds was a tough cut for Harrison back in her PFL days. Now she’s dropping an extra ten pounds on top of that already difficult process.
Thomas noticed that Harrison moves slower at bantamweight than she did at higher weights. Her explosive judo throws seem less crisp. The woman who once tossed opponents around like rag dolls now looks like she’s fighting underwater sometimes. The analyst worries this approach isn’t sustainable long-term. Kayla Harrison’s body can only take so much punishment before something gives way. The real question is whether she can capture UFC gold before the weight cutting takes too much of a toll on her legendary career.
(Image Credit: Mark J. Rebilas – Imagn Images)
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