In their own ways, Amanda Nunes and Kayla Harrison both waited a very long time for what happened on June 7, 2025.
On that evening in Newark, New Jersey, Harrison submitted Julianna Peña to become UFC bantamweight champion. Nunes, who retired in 2023, was in attendance and eager to make a return to fight Harrison, with whom she shares a complicated past. The UFC allowed Nunes to enter the Octagon immediately after Harrison’s win, so the two could square off on the spot.
That single encounter represented something Harrison had worked for her entire career: an opportunity to test herself against the very best. And even after two years away from competition, Nunes, considered the best women fighter in UFC history, remained that gold standard.
For Nunes, it was something else: a chance to expose a suspicion she’d held about Harrison for many years.
“I asked her, ‘You planned this the whole time, right?'” Nunes told ESPN in January. “I wanted everybody to hear it from her own mouth. This is what was happening the whole time. You planned this.”
Looking back, Harrison says she didn’t understand at that moment the point Nunes was trying to make. The scene was chaotic. She had just fought, won a championship and was suddenly promoting her next fight. She managed to offer Nunes a simple response, “Let’s do it,” and only later understood the accusation being made.
“It didn’t really sink in until I watched it later, and I was like, ‘Oh, she really thinks I have been scheming this since the beginning,” Harrison told ESPN on Nov. 3. “And to be fair, that would be a s—ty feeling. To think this whole time, your own team and coaches plotted against you. That is a terrible feeling that I can’t even imagine.
“But it’s just not true.”
On Saturday, Harrison (19-1) and Nunes (23-5) will finally meet for the 135-pound championship at UFC 334 at New York’s Madison Square Garden (Paramount, 9 p.m. ET), in one of the biggest fights in women’s MMA history. Harrison is a two-time Olympic judo gold medalist and one of the most decorated combat sports athletes ever. Nunes is an icon of women’s MMA, its greatest of all time. A two-division champion who overwhelmed such fighters as Ronda Rousey, Cris Cyborg and Holly Holm during her generational run at the top.
If that weren’t enough, Harrison and Nunes have a history. They spent several years training at American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Florida. Harrison joined the gym in 2018, at the beginning of her MMA career. Nunes, who was already the UFC’s dominant champion when Harrison arrived, left the gym in 2022, and eventually identified Harrison as her reason for leaving. In the time since, Nunes has accused Harrison — and even others at American Top Team — of planning this fight from the very beginning.
What unfolded between them could be described as deceit, misunderstanding or paranoia — depending on who you ask. Both, Harrison and Nunes say that whatever the case, there’s no animosity going into UFC 334. American Top Team owner Dan Lambert, for one, doesn’t believe that.
“It’s a hell of a story, and there’s more between these two than they’ll ever let us know,” Lambert told ESPN in January. “They’ll say all the right things about each other. But my opinion? They probably hate each other’s f—ing guts is my opinion.”
When Harrison first arrived at American Top Team, she was looking for a place to build her MMA career with others. She had spent her entire life in judo, and understood that reaching the highest level of even an individual sport, still requires a team. Including training partners.
She visited MMA gyms in New Jersey and Las Vegas before making her way to South Florida, where she instantly clicked with the coaches, the lifestyle and — she thought — one of the gym’s prized athletes. Nunes.
“When I first met Amanda, she was like, ‘Hey, you need to come here, it’s great, I’d love to have you in camp,'” Harrison said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, absolutely.’ She seemed nice.”
They sparred that week. Harrison was just starting out, and she remembers walking away from the session covered in bruises. They sparred only two rounds, Harrison said, but spending that time with Nunes felt good. Shortly after, she made a full commitment to American Top Team.
“I’m the kind of fighter who visualizes the future. And from the first time I trained with Kayla, I told [my wife and then-UFC strawweight] Nina, ‘I am going to fight this girl.’ The first time we exchanged, I looked at Nina and said, ‘This girl is different.'”
Amanda Nunes on Kayla Harrison
“It pisses me off thinking about it now, because I moved here with the expectation that we were going to be in it together,” Harrison said. “I moved here thinking, ‘Oh s—, we’re about to level the f— up. It’s going to be me and her. And then obviously it ended up very different.”
That expectation came from Harrison’s experience in judo, where, she said, athletes regularly train with — and then compete against — each other. Harrison has memories of traveling through Hungary, Croatia and France, where she would work with women she might eventually face in the Olympics. For Harrison, there’s no contradiction in that arrangement. Train together, improve together, and compete against each other if and when the time comes. She said she applies that mindset to her training now as a UFC champion, routinely welcoming and rolling with other bantamweights, including No. 15-ranked Bia Mesquita, at American Top Team.
“I don’t have a scarcity mindset,” Harrison said. “I don’t think that for me to win, you have to lose. I think we all have our time and place and rising tides raise all ships.”
Nunes views things differently.
She said she initially welcomed Harrison, but immediately picked up an energy that was different from regular work. Harrison wasn’t there simply to innocently train alongside her. She was there to ultimately challenge Nunes in every sense of the word.
“I’m the kind of fighter who visualizes the future,” Nunes said. “And from the first time I trained with Kayla, I told [my wife and then-UFC strawweight] Nina, ‘I am going to fight this girl.’ The first time we exchanged, I looked at Nina and said, ‘This girl is different.'”
After that first spar, the two rarely worked together again. On this matter, at least, everyone agrees.
“How many rounds of sparring, real sparring, between them? Less than 10,” American Top Team coach Mike Brown told ESPN in January. “Kayla always wanted to train with Amanda, but Amanda never wanted to train with her.”
Nunes says she never interfered with Harrison’s desire to join the gym and actually believes it was probably the right move for her career. But she maintains that Harrison should have been honest with Nunes, the coaches — and herself — on her reasons. “She didn’t do anything wrong, wanting to come after me,” Nunes said. “My life is all about the challenge. I love the challenge. I like that when you look at me, you want what I have. Let’s go.
“But own it.”
To be fair, in a very real way, Harrison did own it.
In 2018, before she’d even competed in MMA, she was already fielding questions about UFC titles, Nunes, Rousey and every other significant name at the top of the sport because of her undeniable potential as an Olympic gold medalist. And in all those interviews, she always said if the moment came that the challenge was Nunes, she would welcome it. That’s what competitors do.
Nunes and those closest to her, however, saw it as one and the same. If Harrison’s target was to be the best, and Nunes was the best — then Nunes was the target. And there are certain realities to that in MMA.
“People talk like it’s a high school wrestling tournament where you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m so happy for you,'” Nina Nunes told ESPN in January. “No. This is food in my kid’s mouth. It’s my kid’s education. It’s my legacy, forever. These are things that are very personal. It’s fine if others don’t see it that way. We see it that way.”
In spite of the fundamental differences in which each viewed Harrison’s presence in the gym, it managed to work for several years. Harrison signed with the PFL, and became the face of that MMA promotion. She won multiple tournaments, and twice signed exclusive contracts that prevented her from considering the UFC. The two champions of different organizations shared a facility and even coaches with one another, but did not cross paths — in professional competition or even in training.
That all worked relatively well until December 2021.
On Dec. 11, 2021, Nunes was scheduled to make the sixth defense of her bantamweight championship against Peña at UFC 269 in Las Vegas.
Two months prior, Harrison had won her second lightweight championship in the PFL, and wrapped up her exclusive contract with the promotion. She began a period of free agency, in which she could field offers from other organizations, but the PFL maintained its right to match any in order to keep her in its roster.
Harrison, who had already fought four times in 2021 and was essentially out of the gym on holiday, flew to Las Vegas to watch her teammate, Nunes, defend her title.
“So, this is where it got a little weird,” Brown said. “And you have to ask Dan [Lambert] about this, because he knows more about it than I do. But Amanda thought the UFC had plans that when she won, Kayla was going to get into the ring to challenge her. She believed there was some conspiracy to announce that fight.”
When asked for his recollection of that event, Lambert gives a knowing smile but refuses to go into detail.
“I have a rule of never divulging s— about what happens in the gym,” Lambert says. “You have to ask Amanda. I’m not going to say what Amanda thought or what Amanda said, but one million percent, Kayla was not going to the UFC.
“I can even tell you that Kayla and her manager went to dinner with [UFC chief business officer] Hunter Campbell that week, and I told Hunter, ‘No matter what happens at this dinner, no matter what happens at this dinner, I will kill [any potential deal]. I guarantee you, she is not going to the UFC [to fight].’ I knew it would be a problem for Amanda, and there were other options for Kayla. There was an opportunity for Kayla to go make a bunch of money in Bellator MMA or PFL, and then go to the UFC a year later. That was my plan.”
From Nunes and her family’s perspective, all of it — Harrison’s backstage presence during fight week, her dinner with a UFC executive, an interview in which UFC CEO Dana White publicly confirmed his personal interest in Harrison — was proof of what she’d felt, clearly, from Day 1.
She was always going to fight Kayla Harrison, and Kayla Harrison had always intended for it to happen.
“It was the biggest ‘duh’ moment of all time,” Nina Nunes said. “She’s a free agent. She’s having dinner with the UFC. She’s sitting in the front row.
“As much as they want to say, ‘No, it’s not what you think,’ how could anyone think it was anything else? We didn’t know if the UFC would bring Kayla into the ring, but we felt she was there for a reason.”
At UFC 269 inside T-Mobile Arena, Nunes suffered one of the biggest upsets in UFC title fight history. As a more than 11-to-1 betting favorite, Nunes surrendered her bantamweight championship to Peña, tapping to a rear-naked choke at 3:26 of the second round.
Whether any of Nunes’s performance that night can be tied to what happened behind the scenes is speculative. She has never publicly blamed American Top Team for the loss, which is her only defeat in 12 UFC championship fights. But by the time Nunes drove back to Florida from Las Vegas (she and Nina drive to the majority of her fights), she’d already decided to leave the gym and open her own facility in South Florida. Just like that, the 10-year relationship between Nunes and American Top Team, which had produced the greatest run in women’s MMA history, was over.
Harrison found out secondhand.
“I was shocked,” she said. “I had sent her a text when she lost, ‘Let’s get back in the gym and get this back,’ and she’d responded something like, ‘Thank you, cutie,’ or whatever. And then the next thing you know, she was leaving.
“I couldn’t understand it, because I’ve lost before, and it was on me. It wasn’t on the coaches. The game plan wasn’t flawed. I lost because I lost. And I felt that way about Amanda. She got in her own head that night. And that’s on her.”
The physical UFC belt that Nunes won for dethroning Cris Cyborg in December 2018 to become the only women’s double champ is still displayed in the front lobby of American Top Team gym. But every photo of Nunes that once hung on the walls or rafters has been removed.
Lambert says he’s long given up trying to make sense of athletes who come and go from his gym, but he won’t celebrate them once they’re gone.
“You’re either with us or you’re not,” Lambert said. “You’ll see pictures of [retired lightweight] Cole Miller up there with his American Top Team tattoos long after I die. But people who leave the gym? No.
“I’ll keep her belt there, because that’s testimony to what we did as a team, when we were together. I’m not putting a picture up and celebrating someone who didn’t want to be here anymore.”
Is the environment of American Top Team itself at fault for any of what happened between Nunes and Harrison?
Brown acknowledges that filling a practice mat with UFC contenders from the same weight class — something that happens occasionally — may not be the ideal training environment. As a coach, he encourages his athletes to push themselves, while also making their teammates improve. But he understand the potential conflict that approaches create.
“You don’t want to be helping the guy next to you, giving him your secrets and your tricks, if you think he might be a future opponent,” Brown said. “You’re going to be selfish and keep everything to yourself. So, as a coach, I don’t like the idea of pooling guys who might fight each other.”
Lambert agrees, but doesn’t see an alternative. As the gym’s owner, his doors have always been open to the best talent in the world. There are certain realities that come with that, and it’s up to the individual athletes to figure out what they’re comfortable with.
“I’ve had issues where people at our gym have said, ‘Hey, I don’t want other people in my weight class in the gym,'” Lambert says. “And my response is always the same. ‘How the f— am I going to run a gym with one person in every weight class?’ I could do that out of my garage. I want a gym that is full of killers in every weight class, because we think that’s how people get better and get pushed between camps. We’ve had situations where teammates have had to fight. Sometimes they deal with it well, and sometimes they don’t.”
Both Nunes and Harrison adamantly deny Lambert’s suggestion that they “hate each other’s guts.” They simply don’t understand each other.
Nunes will never understand how Harrison and the team turned a blind eye to what she said was obvious from the very beginning. Harrison walked into her gym and challenged her place in the sport. She wasn’t just open to the possibility of fighting Nunes, she wanted it. And eight years after they first met, the fight is finally happening. In Nunes’ eyes, this was always the final destination, and she doesn’t appreciate anyone — least of all, Harrison — who pretended otherwise.
Harrison, meanwhile, will never understand Nunes’s lack of interest in what she initially offered: a teammate. Someone to push her, challenge her, and ultimately make her better. Harrison didn’t go to Florida to take Nunes down, she said. She went to Florida so they could each become the best versions of themselves.
“Maybe the writing was on the wall for everyone, and I sound like the dumb blonde who didn’t know we would eventually fight,” Harrison says. “But she wasn’t my goal. Of course, I wanted to get to the point where I was good enough to challenge her, but I was also just learning on the job and figuring things out.”
They might never see the events of the last eight years the same way. But on Saturday in New York, they will settle the one question that might have been at the center all this time: Who is the best?
