Kayla Harrison made her feelings about Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano very clear during a recent appearance on the Death Row MMA podcast with Jorge Masvidal, and she held little back when the topic came up.
The subject arose when host Jorge Masvidal brought up the Netflix card featuring Rousey’s commentary and Carano’s return to MMA.
Harrison’s reaction was immediate: “Oh my god, bro. Do not get me started. Do not call her that,” when Masvidal referenced Rousey as a former mentor.
Harrison initially tried to stay out of the conversation entirely. “I don’t think we should talk about this because I don’t think I have anything nice to say,” she said. Masvidal offered to let her sit quietly while he and training partner Chris Duncan discussed it instead.
When the conversation turned to Rousey claiming the Netflix card featured the greatest women’s matchup of all time, Harrison stepped back in.
Masvidal stated, “For Rhonda saying that this is the greatest women’s match, like… and I love Gina.”
Harrison replied, saying, “How old is Gina though? She hasn’t competed in 17 years. Like, shut up.”
Harrison then shared a specific story that clearly irritated her. She described a judo drill called randori, explaining the format where whoever wins stays on the mat with no time limit, similar to king of the hill.
She said Rousey had been online telling a story about it. Kayla stated, “She’s like online telling this story about how like yeah I had a lot of pride so I’d be out there for an hour and then finally like you know with these girls and like a 172 lb (90 kilo) guy would take pity on me and come out and throw me.”
Harrison’s response was blunt: “I’m like dude that is like literally a blatant f**king lie. Like now you’re just making s**t up that never happened.”
To put the story in context, Harrison described her own experiences with the same type of training in Japan, where she competed against roughly 500 girls on the mat. “There’s 500 girls, right? I’m standing in the middle of the mat with my hand raised because no one will go with me cuz I’m beating the s**t out of them. I made Japan my b**ch,” she said, noting it took a full decade of getting worked over before she reached that point.
On the topic of her return to the cage, Harrison confirmed she is working her way back from injury. “I think I’m going to have a CT scan in like next week. And if all looks good, then I’m allowed to start drilling. And I think like a couple weeks after that, I’ll be back to sparring.”
