Kayla Harrison is one tough woman not only inside the octagon but with the kind of pain and trauma she has suffered in her past, she is an equally courageous and tough woman outside as well. Harrison, a former 2-time Olympic champion who’s also a 2-time Professional Fighters’ League’s Women’s Lightweight Grand Prix Champion in MMA, which added to that is embedded in her perfect MMA record of 12-0 with 10 finishes.
After all the free agency she has tested since her last year after becoming the PFL Champion for the second time in October last year, Kayla Harrison decided to come back to PFL, a sort of homecoming in a multi-fight year contract and is now looking to win the Grand Prix for the third time straight. This is rather upsetting for the fight fans as people were expecting that she would get signed with a premier organisation like the UFC or Bellator MMA and prove her worth two a new landscape of competition, but seems PFL had the most lucrative deal for the legendary judoka.
Kayla Harrison remembers her days of fighting depression whilst see her father succumb to it later in her life
In an interview for MMA Fighting’s THE MMA HOUR with Ariel Helwani, Harrison somewhere in between talks and reflects on her life rather personally and reminisces the time that she had to go through where even didn’t want to live. Harrison opens up how she was molested by her first Judo coach as well as had to go through a time when her father committed suicide.
“I was sexually abused by my first Judo coach,” says Harrison revealing that because of this traumatic experience she has also been a victim of PTSD “When I was in my teens, I really was suicidal… I got to the point where I was either gonna you know, run away, kill myself or say something. You know that’s the point I got to and I’m just glad I said something you know.” Harrison’s culprit was arrested and put to prison for 10 straight years i.e. from 2006 to 2016, Harrison affirms that she’s at peace for she’s at that point of her life where she has forgiven her coach.
Speaking about her father’s suicide, Kayla Harrison said “My father committed suicide when I was 23 years old. I think about his life all the time, I think about him every day like what moment was set in stone for him you know like at what moment in his life did everything fall into place in order for him to feel he had to do that to escape you know…
And then I think about was it something I did, was it something that someone said to him, was it a series of events, was it one moment where everything changed in his life and if that’s true true, if it is that one moment where everything changes in a person’s life, then f**k I better be smart about how I handle my life like I better be really smart about how I handle other people’s lives and how I treat people and how I talk and how I carry myself and how I interact because sometimes, it is just one moment I think all the time about,” she concludes.
What do you make of Kayla Harrison’s reflection on her past and what do you make of how far she has made it today? For an athlete to overcome that and become a 2-time Olympic champion, alongside being one of the best fighters of women’s MMA on the planet, Harrison has surely paved a way for all the future fighters who will go through the toughest of times to look up to her and remember, no matter how dark the tunnel, there’s always a light at the end.
ncG1vNJzZmiemafAtb%2FPqKmtsl6YvK57zKaYZqORrrmieceaqauho6S7brvPnqWsZaWlerC6jJ2cmqSZo7Ruw8itn2aln6GytMDAraCopl2Wu6V5x56pZp6RqbWmvtJmqq6hk56xpnnDrqmippditaa%2BjK2cnqaRnLJw