Kayla Harrison suffered the biggest professional setback over this past weekend. Harrison lost the chance to bank $1 million dollar prize in PFL season finals against Larissa Pacheco.
While much of the media attention was turned to how Harrison would deal with the loss, and her long time foes gloating, our attention was directed toward a clip of Harrison’s manager going crazy trying to coach her.
Ali Abdelaziz’s clients underperformed at PFL and several of them lost the grand prize at the last event but none of those losses hurt as bad as Kayla’s to whom Ali referred to as ‘Queen’ of MMA and even promised he would retire from MMA if she lost.
NY State Athletic Commission inspector was urged to approach Ali and intervene at which point Abdelaziz was warned to calm down or be escorted out of the venue.
While Harrison lost a major payday she’s still a heavy hitter when it comes to her income. Harrison’s disclosed earnings in the past have been sky high for MMA. Harrison topped all 2022 PFL 6 payouts with a flat $500,000 paycheck (no win bonus).
Dana White previously described Harrison’s pay as ‘obscene’:
“They pay her an obscene amount of money to fight over there. If I was her, I’d stay right where she is and keep picking off the people over (there). When you come here? You know, Amanda Nunes is no joke. (Valentina) Shevchenko is no joke. Rose Namajunas is no … these are all the best women in the world. ”
PFL even had matching rights when she was a free agent – which is how she ended up staying there. She’s got two more bouts on her contract – so she won’t be doing a season next year (season typically takes 4 bouts).
As a two time Olympic gold medalist, Harrison definitely deserves the accolades, as does her opponent which effectively countered some of her go-to moves.
Still many were rubbed the wrong way by the fact that her manager felt he had instructions to contribute. UFC’s Chase Hooper tweeted:
