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Kayla Harrison Confirms MMA Debut Set For June 21st

Kayla Harrison Confirms MMA Debut Set For June 21st

Kayla Harrison is perhaps the most serious contender female MMA will see. The Judo Olympic medalist and one time roommate of Ronda Rousey will be making her MMA debut this summer. Harrison, 27 has been steadily training with American Top Team for the last year.

“The bigger the dream, the more important the team.” #ATT

A post shared by Kayla Harrison (@judokayla) on

“I’ve been waiting for a long time to fight,” Harrison said in her guest spot on the MMA Hour. “First, it was just me, I wanted to get my feet wet, get in there, see if I liked getting punched in the face and now that I’ve established that I do, we’ve sort of been waiting for the PFL to get their stuff together. Their stuff is together.

“Their first card is June 7 at Madison Square Garden, so I’m going to fight on the second card. June 21 in Chicago.”

Harrison confirmed she made stops at the Renzo Gracie Academy in New York, as well as at the UFC Performance Institute and Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas.

“[The PFL] said, ‘You don’t have to fight if you don’t want to, but if you decide this is what you want to do. We have a home for you. And then I started training and now I’m training with one of the best teams in the country.”

As for ATT she revealed:

“I went down to American Top Team to train for a week and it was the first time really since I started doing MMA that I just felt like, ‘Okay, this is where I belong. This is what I’m meant to be doing. I felt like I was making progress everyday,” Harrison said. “And the practices were hard, there are so many people on the mat, the coaching staff is so professional and I’m there with two of the best girls in the world training there every single day.

“I think for me, having someone like Amanda and Joanna, who are both such superstars — when I was younger I had Ronda. And I was always watching Ronda and they always gave Ronda all the attention and I was like, ‘I want that. I want to be the superstar. I want to be the golden girl. So having actual people in front of me who I can look at every day and say, ‘That’s where I want to be,’ is a really positive thing for me.”

You can watch the entire interview below: