Amanda Nunes and Kayla Harrison were once training partners, and “The Lioness” is confident she still has the advantage over her upcoming UFC 334 opponent.
Harrison, the UFC’s reigning bantamweight champion, famously trained with Nunes at American Top Team when Nunes held titles at 135 and 145 pounds. At the time, Harrison was in the middle of making a successful transition from two-time Olympic judo champion to MMA contender, and both fighters have spoken about how Harrison eventually joining the UFC led to rising tensions in the gym.
When Nunes retired in 2023, she left a vacant title that would eventually make its way to Harrison two years later; now, they finally face off in the Nov. 14 co-main event at Madison Square Garden in New York. Nunes is confident not much has changed since their ATT days.
“I spar Kayla before,” Nunes said on the Deep Waters podcast. “We sparred, training. Honestly, when she first arrived in the gym a long time ago, I know she evolved a lot, but she still does the same mistakes since we sparred, you know? I studied her a lot.”
One issue Nunes had with Harrison is that she doesn’t think Harrison was committed to giving her all when rolling with female training partners. However, she acknowledges that a looming in-cage confrontation between them may have made things awkward from the start.
“When she came to the gym, I didn’t feel like she was an open training partner,” Nunes said. “To this day, I don’t see she’s involved a lot with the girls. I think she gets along more with the guys than the girls. You see, she’ll pop up in pictures here and there, but you don’t see her really like… we tried, but for some reason it never happened. We tried many times, but I feel like the energy between me and her—I feel like the energy knew a lot more things than us.
“Then when she started calling me out, every time she had opportunity, she grabbed the microphone and she always talk about me. That’s not good. We share the same mat.”
Nunes also suggested there was an issue with communication and etiquette. She wonders why Harrison couldn’t wait for her to step down as champion before making it known that she intended to take Nunes’ spot.
“I’m the champion in that gym, I brought the belt to that gym,” Nunes said. “Two, not only one. So when she started to talk about me, I feel like everybody has to come together and say, ‘Listen, Kayla. I feel like you came, you want to do this, but we have a champion. You come, you do this, maybe when Amanda retires, you can go and try to get the belt or all those things.’
“But when she started always talking about me, everybody brings it up, it triggered her to really say, ‘Yeah, I want to fight her.’ Fight me? Yeah, I do it anytime, I do this for a living, so this is not a problem. The problem is we share the same mat, the same coach. This is not cool.”