If you didn't watch, the PFL had their final card of the year this past Friday where it crowned all of it's champions and debuted some higher profile signings. There was a lot of debate as to whether putting the card on PPV was a good idea and then when the actual cost got announced, it was evident that it wouldn't sell well. If we ever get to know how many buys the event did, then we can have a more complete conversation on the matter. I'm actually not that interested in that conversation, at least not right now. In terms of just the in cage action, I thought it was a very nice night for the promotion and for those who did watch, I imagine that they were satisfied. The biggest talking point of the night was the face of the PFL, Kayla Harrison, suffering the first loss of her MMA career to Larissa Pacheco. Harrison is what has provided the PFL with some legitimacy before their roster started to really take shape as she's been regarded as one of the three best women's MMA fighters on the planet for probably over a year now. I don't want to do like a full breakdown of the fight, but I think I have to touch on it, at least a little bit, in order to actually get into the topic I want to spend more time on.
After the loss, there was an immediate flood of very typical and standard tweets directed at Kayla Harrison. I've said it on here before, but the worst MMA fighter on the planet is the one who has most recently lost. Whenever someone loses a fight, the general opinion on twitter is that they're the worst fighter ever and everything they've ever done is fraudulent. When someone suffers their first career loss or first loss in a long time, those comments are only magnified and the "overrated" takes start to pour in. In the case of Kayla Harrison, this only gets magnified because of who she is and where she's fighting. When someone gets labeled as potentially the best at what they do, people expect them to dominate, especially against competition that the casual fan isn't familiar with. When Kayla then loses to Larissa Pacheco, it's easy to see how a casual fan who only watches PFL in passing, could come to the conclusion that the media must have been overrating Kayla. This caused MMA media member Aaron Bronsteter to post a short thread on twitter giving his opinion on this topic (first tweet here). Aaron goes on and gives a few examples of other instances where the overrated conversation has happened in women's MMA. I wanted to expand on the idea and fill in some of the gaps where he couldn't because of the twitter character limit.
Now, I'm not claiming to be a better journalist than Aaron (not claiming to be a journalist at all, actually), but I think the biggest hole in his thread is that it lacks context. To be clear, I think this is due to it being a twitter thread and not an actual written article and am in no way implying that he is just pushing opinions for the sake of it. However, a very important part of the term "overrated" is the fact that the thing in question, must actually be rated in the first place. For something to be overrated, there must be a general opinion upon which to judge whether they were appropriately rated or not in the first place. Being overrated, underrated, or appropriately rated is not inherently related to how good or bad someone is at something. Those terms are really only relating to how someone is perceived. As we are talking about fighters, a fighter can be overrated and still be good, while another fighter can be underrated and still be not as good. Someone can be appropriately rated as good, bad, or anywhere in between. That may all seem pretty obvious, but I think the terms sometimes get substituted in for good and bad, especially on social media. To determine whether or not Kayla was overrated or not, we have to judge where we perceive her now against where perception of her was before the fight. Now, I'm not someone who really parses small differences there. If someone just marginally underperforms their ranking by a small amount, I don't think that qualifies as being truly overrated, so keep that in mind.
When I'm talking about this, I'm also not referring to the opinions of the nameless, faceless accounts on twitter either. I'm talking about the opinions of those who talk about MMA for a living and who take pride in their opinions and aren't just spouting off hot takes for something to do. It seemed to me that the general consensus was that Kayla Harrison was one of the best fighters in WMMA right now. She was being talked about as currently being in similar standing to Amanda Nunes, Cris Cyborg, and Valentina Shevchenko. Now, that is in regards to their current status, not in terms of their career resume, but that is still about as highly as someone can be rated. In a sense, it would have been almost impossible for her to be underrated as there wasn't much higher for her to go. What makes all of this really messy for Kayla is that so much of it was based on projection and extrapolation instead of purely the evidence in front of us. The only reason Kayla is in this conversation is because of what she accomplished in judo on the Olympic level. Those accomplishments are unprecedented for American women, but it has expectations for her extremely high, maybe unfairly high at times. She is expected to bulldoze all of her competition and she has largely done just that. That's where we get to the second part of what makes this complicated, which is her level of competition. Kayla Harrison is fighting outside of the UFC, which will always bring up questions about her strength of schedule (at least for the foreseeable future) and she's fighting in a weight class that really doesn't exist. Women's lightweight is a division that really only exists for the purposes of allowing Kayla Harrison to fight consistently, which is necessary for the PFL season format. That has resulted in a roster of fighters who are largely unknown, lower level, and coming up from smaller divisions. This contributes to the high expectations for Harrison's fights because she's just not fighting anyone that any ordinary fan really knows. Their career records are not very impressive and most of their fights have come down two full weight classes at 135. Anything other than a dominant finish for Harrison is viewed as being a bit odd because she should just be on a different level than the rest of the division that the PFL has constructed for her. To see her lose, and pretty cleanly at that, should raise an eyebrow as basically everything the PFL has done is to her benefit.
Now, with that said, we can't act like Larissa Pacheco is just some random civilian either. Pacheco is a better fighter than a lot of people are giving her credit for. She does have a very legitimate MMA record and has some very real wins on her resume as well. Wins over Irene Aldana and Karol Rosa aren't anything to sneeze at. She did have a brief stint in the UFC, where she lost her only two fights (her other two career losses came to Harrison). She was submitted by Jessica Andrade and knocked out by Germaine de Randamie in those fights for whatever that is worth. Again though, basically her entire career was as a bantamweight until she got to the PFL, where she moved up two divisions to their lightweight division. At least right now, in the somewhat immediate aftermath of the fight, I think it is extreme to say that Harrison is a complete fraud. She's been dominating this low level of competition like she should, but that can only take her so far. I think this fight really showed the real cracks in Harrison's game that we had either ignored or looked past in these other fights. Her striking looked very basic and unrefined. When Pacheco didn't just melt under her, she didn't look as dominant and was more focused on just trying to stay on top than actually causing any damage. The thing is though, that this shouldn't really be a surprise to any of us. She's still so new to MMA and her level of competition isn't high enough to consistently put her in a position where she's needed to grow her skills. All of this is fine in a vacuum, but when it's someone who's being put into the top 4 in the game, it creates a level of disconnect. At the end of the day, I do think Harrison was a bit overrated because she was being placed into a tier of fighter that she almost couldn't have reached. Nunes, Cyborg, and Valentina are the three best in the sport today and may very well be the three best women to ever do it. To think that Harrison really could have been on their level with only 4 years of professional MMA experience was pretty silly in hindsight. That isn't to say that she can't get there in time, but those expectations were just way too high for where she was at in her career. I think it is a bit unfortunate though as it's hard to say that and not interpret it as a shot at Kayla when that really isn't the case. Not being a top 3 fighter in the sport 5 years after making your debut isn't an indictment on her career, but she just wasn't ready for that level of praise just yet.
The last thing that I wanted to do was go through the comparisons that Aaron made in the original thread. I think a bit more context is necessary to fully understand those comparisons and where they align and where they're different. There's no perfect comparison for situations like this, but there are points within each situation that we can take and try to piece them together. The first two situations have a lot in common, so I'm going to lump them together a bit. Those are both Cyborg and Nunes. Where these situations are similar to each other, but different from Kayla, is that both Nunes and Cyborg were already long established at the time of their big loss. Cyborg was regarded as one of the two best WMMA fighters of all time when she lost to Amanda, so all of that wasn't just gone upon one loss. On top of that, losing to Amanda wasn't viewed as a bad loss or at least not on the same level as Pacheco. Amanda was already a champion with two wins over Valentina and the finishes over Miesha Tate and Ronda Rousey. Losing to a champion in Amanda Nunes and losing to Larissa Pacheco isn't the same thing and I don't think I really need to go into detail as to why. Cyborg was 20-1 at the time with 20 wins in a row and she was fighting largely the best available competition. You could make the argument that the competition Cyborg was facing is actually comparable to what Kayla is facing now and it wouldn't be the worst argument I've ever heard, but I think the point still stands. Cyborg was fighting the best available while Harrison is fighting in the second or third best promotion in a weight class that only exists for her. I think out of the three comparisons, Cyborg losing to Amanda was probably the worst one.
The next one is the most recent, which was Amanda Nunes losing to Julianna Pena. I think this one is a bit closer since Amanda was generally viewed to be in a league above Pena like how Kayla was with Pacheco. I think it was also a case of the public ignoring potential flaws in a fighter due to their dominance. We sort of ignored, forgot, or maybe weren't around to remember the issues that Amanda had with her cardio in the past. It had been so long since it popped up that maybe some just assumed it was fixed. It turns out that wasn't the case and Julianna Pena exploited it, much like Pacheco did with Kayla's weaknesses. Again though, the comparison starts to fall apart because Amanda had already largely cemented her legacy in WMMA history (and just MMA history for that matter). She was already the greatest women's MMA fighter of all time and the loss to Pena really didn't change that. She was already a double champion and had defeated basically every significant name that came through the 135 and 145 lbs division in her time. Amanda had largely accomplished everything that there is to accomplish in the sport when she lost to Pena, where Harrison still had a lot to prove in terms of level of competition. I do think the Pena and Pacheco comparison works though as they're fighters who have had some really nice highs, but also some mixed results. Pacheco has those few good wins that I mentioned above, but she historically struggled when fighting a higher level of competition. Pena had a similar story. She had some good wins over Jessica Eye, Cat Zingano, and Sara McMann, but had struggled when getting that step up. She also picked up some nice wins to become TUF champion, so there's that too. The glaring difference is that Amanda was on the back nine of her career after becoming one of the most decorated champions in MMA at the highest level, where Kayla is a relative newcomer who was still in the early stages of building a legacy. The timing of the loss is what causes it to have a bigger impact on general thoughts towards Harrison's career.
The one thing that Harrison does have is that it was a 48-47 decision, even though there really wasn't anyone saying that she could've gotten the nod. Both Amanda and Cyborg got finished. I'm not sure how much stock you put into something like that, but it's not nothing. Maybe it's just me being a prisoner of the moment, but I still kind of think that Amanda and Cyborg looked better in those fights, despite being finished. Amanda was landing solid, powerful strikes, but Pena was able to absorb them and keep coming. She gassed out and then tapped to a choke that really didn't seem that tight, which isn't a great look, but she seemed fine early. Cyborg didn't look awful in the Nunes fight either. They were trading in the pocket and she landed some hard shots, but Nunes was able to take them. I think that's different than Kayla kind of looking almost afraid (afraid in a sense of losing the fight, not afraid of her opponent). She looked so desperate to just maintain top position instead of looking to fight that it was just strange. The juxtaposition of seeing Kayla bulldoze her way through some lackluster competition to what she looked like against the very obvious best fighter she's ever faced just makes the loss seem worse even if it is somewhat similar to those other losses in a vacuum. When it comes to both Amanda and Cyborg, I don't really think anyone (besides the twitter trolls) were even considering calling them overrated. Their resumes were so filled out that their respective losses really didn't do anything to diminish it.
The final comparison is the one that makes a little more sense to me and has more than a layer or two of legitimate commonality. That, of course, is Ronda Rousey's loss to Holly Holm and to a degree her follow up loss to Amanda Nunes. The big disconnect is the level of competition again. I'm not going to beat a dead horse here, but it still is the glaring difference. Holly Holm is a legend of women's combat sports and Amanda Nunes is the WMMA GOAT in my opinion. Larissa Pacheco really doesn't compare to either of them, at least as things currently stand. Aside from that, these situations are somewhat similar. There's the obvious connection with both Ronda and Kayla having the judo background, but I don't even want to harp too much on that fact. The biggest point of comparison for me is how they both went from this point of invincibility to a sudden realization of their limitations in the blink of an eye. Kayla was being talked about as the best fighter in WMMA and then lost to a fighter that most casual fans have never seen before. Ronda went from being talked about potentially beating Floyd Mayweather to being brutally knocked out just like that. There was really nobody discussing the potential limitations of their skill sets or weak areas up until they lost and then all of the sudden everyone starts to hyper-analyze everything they've done in retrospect (partially including myself). All of the sudden we have people talking about how raw Kayla is on the feet, which is exactly what happened to Ronda when she went up against a really high level striker. No one was mentioning those things before though. The other big point of comparison is that I think people were kind of looking for things to point out about them. It's slightly different because a lot of what happened to Ronda was retroactive, but my point still stands. People, especially the farther removed we get from the fight, love to call Ronda overrated because they generally don't like her. The way she handled both the losses to Holm and Amanda rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. The way she conducted herself in the media and especially the way she talked about the fans, who were in part responsible for elevating her to that status she had, turned a lot, if not most, people against her. She then went on to alienate the professional wrestling fanbase that accepted her, but that's a whole different story. My point is that people don't like her for other reasons, so they cling to whatever reasons they can to critique her as a fighter. In Ronda's case, she alienated so many people on her way out of the sport, that I think a generally negative viewpoint of her is probably the most common opinion of her career at this point. The losses showed that Ronda was a specialist, which wasn't uncommon for that period in MMA history. Plenty of specialists succeeded and we all kind of know that they wouldn't get the same results if they were active today. The difference is that no one talks about how Royce Gracie would struggle in 2022 because people generally like and respect him. No one feels the need to have that conversation because they don't want to speak negatively of him for basically no reason. However, because they don't like Ronda, they have no problem talking about her in that way. I think we're getting a bit of that with Kayla. Kayla is very vocal about how she feels about her skills and career. She has had no issue speaking about herself in similar fashion to some of the legends of the sport, so when she loses to someone who isn't on that level, people will jump at the opportunity to criticize her. People don't like her having such a high opinion of herself when she hasn't fought that level of competition. At the end of the day, when you compare yourself to Amanda and Cyborg then lose to Pacheco, this is the type of reaction you're going to get and I think Kayla was probably aware of that going in. People don't like her for the way she talks about herself and some people feel that she ducked the big fights. We know that PFL exercised their right to match her contract, but some people just don't care and feel that if she would've put her foot down, the PFL could have been forced to let her go. Whether that's fair or not (and whether the criticisms leveled at Ronda were fair or not) is a different conversation, but they exist nonetheless. As things currently stand, I think Kayla's current situation is most similar to what we saw Ronda go through.
Just to finish up, I want to emphasize that I really don't say any of this from a place of malice. I don't have any ill will towards Kayla and don't wish to disparage her in anyway. In fact, when I've talked about her in the past, its generally been positively. I think she's an awesome fighter and has all of the potential in the world. However, just by definition, I think I have to come to the conclusion that she was at least slightly overrated. I just don't think you can be talked about in the same regards as Amanda, Cybord, and Valentina, then lose to Larissa Pacheco at a weight that purely exists for your own benefit and still be considered appropriately rated. I'm not going to sit here and say that this invalidates Kayla's career or that this will be her defining legacy in the sport because that would be ridiculous. I think Kayla could still go on to have a fantastic career and she has the potential to end up being the P4P queen in regards to active fighters one day. Maybe she can even work her way into the WMMA GOAT conversation one day. However, I think we saw that she's just not ready for that level of praise right now. I think her being in those conversations are more of a future goal than a current reality and some people were talking as if it was an objective fact that she belonged not too long ago.
What do you guys think? What did you think of the fight? Which comparison do you think fits this situation best? Leave your general thoughts on this situation in the comments. Thanks for reading and have a good one.
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