Kayla Harrison vs. Amanda Nunes: Inside Their Fighting Styles and Technical Arsenals

Let’s start with a detail that’s easy to overlook. Kayla Harrison won her UFC title with a kimura. Amanda Nunes won her first UFC title with a rear-naked choke. Keep those two finishes in mind when the conversation turns to judo against punching power. There’s quite a bit happening around those labels.

The reputations make sense. Harrison won Olympic judo gold in 2012 and 2016 before becoming an MMA champion. Nunes stopped opponents with punches and kicks across a championship career in two UFC divisions. But how does Harrison keep somebody down? And why would Nunes wrestle someone she has already hurt standing? That’s where I want to spend some time.

They’re scheduled to meet for the women’s bantamweight title at UFC 334, at Madison Square Garden on November 14, 2026. But before the fight happens, we’ve already got plenty to talk about.

Their past opponents give us a good place to start. Some offered the clinch. Others stayed upright, hit back or kept attacking underneath. Follow what Harrison and Nunes did next, and we have more to discuss than another set of highlights.

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Kayla Harrison and the Work Behind the Takedown 🥇

Calling Harrison a UFC newcomer in 2024 needed some explanation. She arrived with two Olympic gold medals and PFL tournament titles from 2019 and 2021. Her April debut against Holly Holm meant a new promotion and weight class for an established professional. She was bringing a lot into that cage.

Her judo background helps explain why close contact is familiar territory. MMA adds a few complications, though. There’s no jacket to grab. Somebody can punch you while you’re trying to get close. And once you arrive, the fence may help your opponent stay on her feet. Even an Olympic-level skill needs a way through all of that.

Then comes the part the takedown highlight tends to skip: keeping the attack going after the landing. Her first three UFC appearances let us follow that job, including a night when getting to the right position was much harder.

➡️ Holly Holm Gave Her a Clinch to Work With

At UFC 300, Holm initiated the clinch exchanges. Harrison turned their second entanglement into top position and spent the rest of the opening round landing punches and elbows. In the second, she took Holm down again, reached the back and finished a rear-naked choke at 1:47. So the contact Holm initiated became a place where Harrison could attack.

It’s worth sitting with that for a moment. Grabbing an opponent might stop her punching, slow things down or help hold her against the fence. Once attached, though, she can work too. She can improve a grip, move her hips or turn you. You’ve brought the fight closer; you still have to win it there.

That’s why I’d pay attention before anyone leaves the floor. Control of an arm or the upper body can make it harder to recover balance while the feet are being moved or obstructed. Harrison herself has described gripping as a foundation of her judo. The throw gets the replay. The struggle that made it possible often gets less attention.

Think about trying to turn away while somebody controls your arm and keeps her body close. You need some space back. An arm braced between the bodies, often called a frame, can help create it. Getting your arm inside hers can help too. That apparently quiet hand fighting is a fight over whether the attacker gets a connection she can use.

If you’ve ever spent a grappling round trying to retrieve your own arm, you probably don’t need much convincing.

Against Holm, the attack kept going well beyond the takedown. Back control left Holm defending her neck with Harrison behind her. Before she could face her opponent again, she had to deal with that attachment. From the sofa, “just turn around” sounds wonderfully efficient. The person attached to your back tends to complicate it.

So there’s a chain of work here: make the contact useful, get to the floor and turn the landing into another attack. The next fight showed how difficult the first part can become when the opponent makes her stay outside.

➡️ Ketlen Vieira Made Her Earn the Position

Six months later, Ketlen Vieira made that route much less comfortable at UFC 307.

Harrison ended the first round in mount. Vieira stayed upright in the second, landing heavy shots that marked and cut her. Harrison recovered top position in the third and won a unanimous decision, with scores of 30–27, 30–27 and 29–28. That middle round belongs here just as much as the rounds she controlled.

After all, what good is your best position if you’re struggling to reach it? Being excellent once attached still leaves you with the job of getting attached on terms you can use. Vieira made that part of Harrison’s grappling matter.

This is where the punches come into the conversation. A defender who’s dealing with strikes has less freedom to leave both hands waiting for a grip. But an entry that stalls can also leave the attacker close enough to be hit. Keep forcing contact while the other woman holds her balance and finds room to answer, and you can pay for the attempt before you ever get to use your grappling.

The third round matters too. Harrison recovered a position she’d struggled to establish and went on to win. We can give her credit for working through the difficulty while keeping Vieira’s resistance in view. It gives us a more useful picture than assuming every opponent will make the route equally easy or equally difficult.

➡️ Julianna Peña and the Switch to the Kimura

Against Julianna Peña at UFC 316 in June 2025, Harrison won the bantamweight title with a submission late in the second round. Let’s slow down the explanation of that finish.

Harrison controlled the far-side wrist and brought Peña’s shoulders back to the canvas. She worked toward an arm-triangle choke before switching to the kimura. The shoulder lock finished the fight, but there’s a reason to look at the wrist first.

That arm is useful for a lot more than defending a submission. The bottom fighter can post it on the mat, brace it against the attacker or use it to help turn her body. Control the wrist and you can make those jobs harder. By the time the finishing grip arrives, you may already have taken away one of the defender’s ways to move.

Now think about the change of attack. An arm triangle uses the head and one arm to threaten a choke. A kimura isolates an arm and puts rotational pressure on the shoulder. The defender has a different problem to solve, with the attacker still close enough to keep working.

Harrison could move away from the first submission and keep attacking from her position. If you’re underneath, stopping the choke hasn’t necessarily bought you an escape. Your shoulders may still be pinned, with an arm available for the next attack. There’s work left after that first bit of relief.

➡️ The Pacheco Loss Belongs in the Picture

Before we turn that into a story where top position always takes care of everything, go back to Larissa Pacheco. She beat Harrison by unanimous decision in their third meeting, in the 2022 PFL championship, after losing the first two. It’s an important fight to keep alongside the submission wins.

Harrison completed takedowns while Pacheco kept threatening submissions and recovering positions. In the third round, Pacheco attacked a triangle from underneath. In the fifth, she got straight back up after a takedown. Reaching the floor had left Harrison with plenty still to solve.

We’ve all heard some version of “once she gets on top, it’s over.” This is why we should be careful with it. The bottom fighter can keep making the position awkward. The woman on top still has to protect herself, deal with the guard and stop the next escape. A takedown doesn’t make those jobs disappear.

Keep the context with it. This was a lightweight fight, years before Harrison’s UFC title win. It gives us examples of resistance underneath and during transitions. Strength doesn’t make those problems disappear. They may come back when we get to Nunes’s wrestling.

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Amanda Nunes and the Weapons Around the Power 🦁

Keep those grappling examples in mind as we turn to Nunes. Her first UFC title win gives us another reason to look past the label.

At UFC 200 in July 2016, Nunes hurt Miesha Tate with strikes and finished a rear-naked choke in the opening round. Tate attempted a takedown during the finishing exchange before Nunes moved into the choke. The fight changed position, and Nunes had another attack ready.

That’s a rough problem for the defender. You’re dealing with the punches, then the exchange moves and you have to protect your neck. Nunes’s striking helped bring the fight there. Her grappling let her continue. We need both parts to explain the finish.

Even if we stay with the striking for a while, there’s more to discuss than the power. Start with what an opponent has to defend before a big shot lands.

➡️ The Jab and Kicks Give Her More Than One Target

The Irene Aldana fight at UFC 289 gives us five rounds to work with. Nunes won a unanimous decision, using a mix of jabs, kicks to the body, heavy combinations and takedowns. That’s a lot for the defender to keep reading.

A jab can reach quickly with the lead hand and interrupt someone coming forward. A body kick makes the opponent protect a target below the head. And a combination asks her to deal with what follows the first punch. Put those options together and the defender has to keep adjusting where she stands and what she protects.

Try looking at the distance from that side of the exchange. You can be outside punching range and still close enough for a kick. Hands ready to deal with punches may need to move to protect the body. The attack doesn’t have to look spectacular to give the defender something else to worry about.

The kicking threat produced a major finish of its own against Holm. At UFC 239 in July 2019, Nunes dropped her with a right head kick and stopped her with follow-up strikes in the first round. That’s another part of the range an opponent has to take seriously.

A high guard has to deal with a kick arriving around the side as well as punches coming through the middle. So when we talk about Nunes’s hands, keep the feet in the picture. Even an exchange that starts with punches can leave the defender accounting for more than one route to her head.

➡️ Peña Showed What Happened When the Punches Kept Coming Back

Then Peña gave us a very different kind of fight. At UFC 269 in December 2021, Nunes had success in the opening round. Peña kept coming, landed repeatedly in the second and finished a rear-naked choke. Early success hadn’t stopped the challenger from answering.

This is the question I’d put beside the power: what happens if the opponent is still there, still throwing, after the first hard shot? Peña kept the exchanges going. Nunes still had to deal with the next punch and the decision that came after it.

You can hurt someone for entering and still have to defend her reply. Stay and exchange, make room to leave, or grapple? You need balance and a decision while the opponent is working too. The best weapon in your game still needs support around it.

Nunes later said her timing had been off and acknowledged shortcomings in her preparation. We should hear that as her explanation. The result alone won’t let us sort out exactly how much came from preparation, fatigue or individual choices in the cage.

What we do have is Peña continuing to apply pressure, turning a difficult first round into a second-round submission win. The rematch gave Nunes the same opponent to work against again, with a very different outcome.

➡️ The Rematch Changed the Terms of the Exchanges

At UFC 277 in July 2022, Nunes regained the title by unanimous decision. The scorecards were 50–45, 50–44 and 50–43. She switched stances and dropped Peña three times in the second round. There are specific changes to look at here before we reach for “she came back better.”

Take the stance. In southpaw, the right hand and right foot are in front. Against an orthodox opponent, that changes how the hands and feet line up for straight punches and hooks. The opponent has a different arrangement to approach, even though she’s still trying to reach the same person.

Ahead of the later Aldana fight, striking coach Sean Madden discussed Nunes’s power from both stances. He also identified the southpaw right hook as a counter option against Aldana’s jab. That was his assessment of that matchup, rather than confirmation of a particular counter in the Peña rematch. It helps explain what a stance change can offer.

Nunes could give Peña a different striking arrangement while keeping a threat in either hand. That’s something concrete to discuss when we talk about her adjustment after the loss.

Imagine approaching a lead hand, then having to read it from the other side. A jab available against one stance may meet a different counter against the next. The defender has to check the distance and alignment again, while the exchange is moving.

After some second-round knockdowns, Nunes let Peña get back up. Following a hurt opponent down can look obvious from our seats. The fighter can choose to continue standing instead, where she may prefer the next exchange.

Later, Nunes chose to take the fight down herself. That brings us back to the work after the takedown.

➡️ Her Wrestling Is Part of the Offense

In the later rounds of the rematch, Nunes used takedowns, top control and elbows from inside Peña’s guard. Peña kept threatening submissions underneath, and Nunes escaped them. Getting on top gave her a place to attack. It also left her with attacks to defend.

We met this problem with Harrison and Pacheco. The person underneath still has arms and legs she can use, even while she’s absorbing strikes. If you’re the one on top, you don’t get to stop paying attention to those threats because the position looks good on the broadcast.

There’s a trade-off each time you make room to hit. More space can help you throw a stronger punch, but it may also let the defender turn her hips or isolate an arm. Staying close can restrict that movement while leaving less room for some of your own strikes. Holding and hitting have to work together, and they can get in each other’s way.

Nunes also used takedowns against Aldana. Put those alongside her submission of Tate, and there’s plenty of reason to study her grappling without turning it into a promise about what happens against Harrison.

It leaves her opponents with another question. They have to defend the punches and kicks while accounting for the possibility that Nunes will choose to wrestle. That’s how the grappling belongs in a discussion that began with her striking.

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Where the Harrison vs Nunes Match Gets Interesting

Bring the two women back together now. Their past fights have already made “judo against boxing” feel like a fairly cramped description.

Start with open distance. Harrison needs a way across the space to useful contact. Strikes can help occupy the defender on the way in, though sometimes a punch is simply there to land. It doesn’t need a hidden takedown attached to it. Nunes, meanwhile, has shown attacks at both punching and kicking range. For either woman, the distance decides which skills are available right now.

Look at the feet after the attack. Can she move again, or is she planted close enough to be reached? A missed punch can leave an entry. A stalled entry can leave room for a punch back. I’d want to follow those decisions before judging the exchange by its finishing move.

Once they’re in the clinch, look at where the head, arms and hips are. Is there room to turn or separate? Can either fighter improve her grip? The fence can limit movement, but it can also help the defender stay up. Grabbing someone against it means you’ve started another job. You haven’t made her stop working.

On the ground, Harrison’s win over Peña shows control supporting a submission change. Nunes’s rematch shows top offense continuing while submissions come back from underneath. Both count as “being on top,” but that phrase leaves a lot of fighting out.

And if you’re watching someone struggle to stand up, follow what she needs to free first. Can she build a base? Move her hips? Keep herself protected while doing it? The story about wrestling and BJJ inside the MMA cage goes further into those competing demands. Standing up sounds simple until every part of the movement has an opponent attached to it.

That’s where I find the comparison useful: what can each woman do from the position she has reached? We have plenty to discuss before picking a winner.

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What Their Records Still Cannot Tell Us

You might be thinking about the shared opponents. Both fought Holm and Peña, so can we line up the results and work it out? Let’s slow it down before going that far as someone start to apply mathematics logic into combat sport.

Nunes faced Holm in 2019; Harrison faced her in 2024. Their Peña fights came at different stages of each career too. Shared names give us examples, with different opponents’ circumstances attached. We can’t treat those fights as the same test.

Time away matters as well. Nunes announced her retirement after beating Aldana in June 2023. Harrison’s latest completed UFC appearance was her June 2025 title win. Their original booking was postponed after Harrison needed neck surgery. There are real gaps between the performances we can study and the next fight.

Those gaps leave questions about how each woman will look when she competes again. The dates won’t tell us exactly what her body can do now.

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Look at the Choices as Well as the Finish

Think back through Harrison’s examples. Holm offered contact she turned into offense. Vieira made reaching the position harder. Control against Peña let her change submissions. Pacheco kept creating problems after takedowns. That gives us plenty to look for behind the grappling results.

With Nunes, we’ve got a head-kick finish, a submission for her first UFC belt and a loss followed by a different approach in the rematch. Her last fight before retirement included striking variety and offensive wrestling. We can follow her choices about where and how to keep attacking.

I’d start with those choices. We can discuss them, disagree about them and go back to the footage to check.

Next time you watch, follow the decision after the first attack. Does she try again, change the target or move position? That gives us much more to discuss than the labels we started with.