Ahead of her massive return at UFC 316 this weekend, Kayla Harrison’s always-staggering physique has become the subject of discourse on Reddit, with many pointing to her size as she lines up to face Julianna Pena.
Harrison, who will co-headline this weekend’s return to New Jersey for the promotion, competes for the undisputed bantamweight crown. She hs earned the title fight following back-to-back Octagon wins over Holly Holm and Ketlen Vieira. However, the two-time Olympic gold medallist has faced severe vitriol, courtesy of Pena suggesting substance abuse on her part.
Notably, Harrison won her Olympic medals at a 172 lbs limit and used to compete in PFL at 155 lbs. So, cutting down to bantamweight for the UFC has been her biggest challenge so far. Needless to say, she has yet to fail, and whenever she does step up on the weighing machine, her shredded physique catches many an eye.
And just days out from her co-headliner, a video of Harrison playing with her children has caught social media by storm, with many a fan seemingly awestruck by the size of her guns. Notably, comparison was drawn to former UFC light heavyweight champion, Alex Pereira.
And in the main post on the platform, she was compared to former Mr. Olympia and ex-California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Furthermore, a third user claimed Harrison would handily defeat Pena this weekend. And to boot, enjoy a dominant run at the bantamweight limit. “She’s a beast, I’ve never seen anyone like her,” they wrote.
“She backs her talk up with action too. I think she bulldozes Pena & becomes the champ, a dominant one probably”, predicted another.
But as impressive as her physique is right now, Pena seems to have continued taking issue with it.
Pena’s obsession with Harrison’s body
With both gunning for a mega fight with the returning Amanda Nunes after UFC 316, Pena has made her fight with Harrison more than personal.
Tipped to receive the biggest threat to her throne already, two-time champion, Pena has been concentrating on promoting her fight with Harrison — to a rather personal note in recent weeks.
“They act like there’s never been an Olympian who has busted for steroids,” Peña told MMA Junkie.
“Then you look at that Icarus documentary and you see the lengths these Russians and other teams would go to pass these drug tests because they know they would p*ss hot if they took a real drug test,” the incumbent champion claimed.
“People that do these kinds of things are so smart that they know it down to a science, how to get off, when to cycle off, when to go on and when not to,” she continued.
To boot, with UFC ditching USADA for their own in-house testing program last year, Pena claims Harrison could conceivably cheat now, and with a lot more ease.
Speaking about her own experience, Pena claimed that she personally felt a lot more comfortable urinating into Icarus bottles than the current ones UFC provides since it’s a little plastic cup.
“I can only focus on myself, and I can only speak in ‘I’ statements, and I only know what I’m doing. But I don’t like the way that the testing system is now. I think that it is a lot more lax than ever before,” she asserted, disappointed.
