Amanda Nunes walked away from the UFC in 2023 with two belts on her résumé, virtually every major name of her generation already beaten and very little left to prove. More than three years later, she is coming back for the one fight that still feels genuinely new.
Kayla Harrison vs Amanda Nunes takes place at UFC 334 on Saturday 14 November, with Harrison making the first defence of her UFC women’s bantamweight title at Madison Square Garden in New York. It is the co-main event underneath Ciryl Gane vs Josh Hokit, but there is a strong argument that this is the fight on the card with the biggest story behind it.
Harrison has spent years being compared with Nunes. They trained at the same gym, competed in the same wider era and were always likely to end up in the same division if the timing ever worked. Nunes retired before that could happen, Harrison went on to become UFC champion, and suddenly retirement did not look quite as permanent.
For the latest markets as fight night approaches, visit the BetVictor UFC betting and odds page.
When Is Kayla Harrison vs Amanda Nunes?
Kayla Harrison vs Amanda Nunes takes place on Saturday 14 November 2026 at Madison Square Garden in New York.
UFC 334 begins with the early prelims at 5pm ET, followed by the prelims at 7pm and the main card at 9pm. For viewers in the UK, that means the early prelims begin at 10pm on Saturday, the prelims start at midnight and the main card gets underway at 2am GMT on Sunday morning.
Harrison vs Nunes is scheduled as the co-main event, so the safest estimate for their cage walks is somewhere around 4am GMT. That is not an official start time, and it will depend on how long the earlier fights last, but UK fans should expect another late night rather than an Abu Dhabi-style evening card.
The full list of upcoming events and confirmed UK timings can be found on our UFC schedule 2026 page.
Why Is Amanda Nunes Coming Back?
This is where the fight gets interesting, because Nunes did not retire after a decline. She left while she was still champion.
Her final fight before retirement came against Irene Aldana at UFC 289 in June 2023, where she dominated across five rounds and then placed both the bantamweight and featherweight belts on the canvas before announcing she was finished. By that stage, her résumé already included wins over Ronda Rousey, Cris Cyborg, Valentina Shevchenko twice, Julianna Peña, Holly Holm, Miesha Tate and Raquel Pennington. UFC later inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2025.
There was no obvious unfinished business. Then Harrison arrived.
Once Harrison moved from the PFL to the UFC and started beating ranked bantamweights, the matchup stopped being something fans could only argue about online. When Harrison submitted Julianna Peña to win the title at UFC 316, Nunes entered the Octagon afterwards and the two finally faced off.
That was the moment this fight started feeling inevitable.
How Did Kayla Harrison Become UFC Champion?
Harrison’s UFC run has been short compared with Nunes’ career, but she has not wasted much time.
The two-time Olympic judo gold medallist arrived in the promotion in 2024 after spending most of her MMA career in the PFL, where she became one of the organisation’s biggest names. Questions followed her into the UFC, particularly around how comfortably she could make 135lb and whether the physical advantage she enjoyed at higher weights would still be there.
She answered most of them quickly.
Wins over Holly Holm and Ketlen Vieira put Harrison straight into the title picture before she challenged Julianna Peña at UFC 316 in June 2025. Harrison controlled the grappling exchanges, forced Peña backwards and eventually finished the fight with a kimura at 4:55 of the second round to become UFC women’s bantamweight champion.
That took Harrison to 19-1 professionally, with her only defeat coming against Larissa Pacheco during her PFL career.
The championship win also changed the Nunes conversation immediately. Harrison was no longer simply the former PFL star people wanted to compare with Amanda Nunes. She was now holding the belt Nunes once dominated.
Why Was Harrison vs Nunes Delayed?
This fight should already have happened.
Harrison and Nunes were originally scheduled to meet at UFC 324 in January 2026, but Harrison was forced to withdraw after a long-standing neck problem became serious enough to require surgery.
Her manager later said the issue had been present for years and that surgery had become necessary rather than optional. Harrison subsequently showed the sizeable surgical scar on her neck while beginning her recovery.
That adds another layer to the UFC 334 matchup.
Most of the attention will naturally fall on Nunes returning after more than three years away, but Harrison has not exactly enjoyed a normal championship preparation either. She will be defending the belt for the first time after a major neck operation and a lengthy period outside competition.
For both women, there is some uncertainty. It just comes from very different places.
Harrison vs Nunes Is Really a Style Fight
The names are enormous, but the actual matchup is quite simple to understand.
Nunes wants space. Harrison wants contact.
If Nunes can keep the fight in the centre of the Octagon, defend the initial clinch entries and force Harrison to trade at range, I think the challenger becomes extremely dangerous. Nunes remains one of the best power punchers women’s MMA has produced, particularly with the right hand, and Harrison has never faced anyone with that combination of speed, timing and proven knockout power.
Harrison’s route is the opposite.
She does not need to have a kickboxing contest with Amanda Nunes to prove anything. Her best work comes when she closes distance, gets her hands locked around an opponent and turns the fight into a physical grind along the fence or on the mat.
The judo background matters here because Harrison does not always rely on traditional wrestling shots from distance. She can enter the clinch, force an opponent to carry her weight and create throws or trips from positions where somebody like Nunes would normally feel relatively safe.
That is where I think the fight will be decided.
Can Nunes Stop Harrison’s Grappling?
Nunes is not helpless on the ground. Far from it.
She has spent large parts of her career showing excellent defensive grappling, strong takedown awareness and the physical strength needed to fight out of bad positions. She also owns four submission victories herself.
The question is whether that remains true after such a long layoff against somebody as physically demanding as Harrison.
Defending one takedown is not enough.
Harrison can force repeated clinch exchanges, make opponents defend against the fence and turn a seemingly harmless position into several minutes of control. If Nunes has to fight through that process again and again for five rounds, the layoff becomes much more relevant.
That is also why I am less interested in whether Nunes looks sharp in the first three minutes and more interested in what she looks like after 15.
If she is still moving well, defending cleanly and firing with the same speed late in the fight, Harrison has a major problem.
Amanda Nunes Still Has the Power Advantage
There is another side to this matchup that cannot be ignored.
Harrison may be the champion, but she has never been hit by somebody quite like Amanda Nunes.
Nunes finished Ronda Rousey in 48 seconds. She knocked Cris Cyborg out in 51 seconds. Holly Holm lasted a little longer before Nunes finished her with a head kick in the opening round.
The numbers only tell part of the story.
Nunes has always carried the sort of power that changes how opponents fight because one mistake can immediately become the end of the contest.
Harrison sometimes enters exchanges fairly upright because she is confident that she can close the distance and overpower the woman in front of her. Against Nunes, that could be dangerous.
If Harrison gets lazy on an entry or leaves her chin available while trying to establish the clinch, there is a very realistic possibility that Nunes makes her pay before the grappling becomes relevant.
Our feature on the rise of women’s MMA looks at how Nunes, Harrison and the fighters before them changed the divisions over the last decade.
Is Amanda Nunes Too Old to Come Back?
Nunes will be 38 years old when she competes at UFC 334, but the number itself bothers me less than the inactivity.
Plenty of elite fighters have remained competitive into their late thirties.
The harder thing to judge is what more than three years without a fight does to timing.
You can spar, train hard and you can work with world-class fighters in the gym.
None of that is exactly the same as standing inside the Octagon while another world-class fighter is actively trying to hurt you.
Nunes was still outstanding when she retired, which is why I would never write her off, but Harrison has remained active throughout most of that period and has already adapted to the UFC environment.
For me, that difference matters more than the age gap alone.
Kayla Harrison vs Amanda Nunes Odds
At the time of writing, BetVictor odds for Kayla Harrison vs Amanda Nunes are not yet available.
Early markets elsewhere have opened Harrison as the favourite, which makes sense given that she is the active champion and Nunes is returning from a long retirement.
I would still expect plenty of money to come in on Nunes as the fight gets closer.
This is not an ageing former champion coming back after a run of defeats. Nunes left the sport while still on top, and there will be plenty of people who believe that version of her beats Harrison.
Once BetVictor markets are available, we will update this section with the latest prices.
UFC 334 Fight Card
UFC 334 is headlined by Ciryl Gane defending the heavyweight title against undefeated challenger Josh Hokit, with Harrison vs Nunes directly underneath as the co-main event. The card also includes Caio Borralho vs Yousri Belgaroui, Kevin Holland vs Uros Medic and Stephen Thompson’s final UFC appearance against Charles Radtke.
There is still time for the card to change before November, so our UFC Tonight guide will have the final running order and UK timings during fight week.
How to Watch Harrison vs Nunes in the UK
UFC 334 will be shown live in the UK through TNT Sports, with streaming also available through HBO Max.
The main card begins at 2am GMT, meaning Harrison and Nunes are likely to enter the Octagon several hours into Sunday morning.
Our full how to watch UFC in the UK guide explains the current broadcast setup in more detail.
Kayla Harrison vs Amanda Nunes Prediction
I’m going with Kayla Harrison by decision, although this is one of those predictions where I would not be remotely surprised to be wrong.
If this fight happened when Nunes was active and at the peak of her title run, I would probably lean towards her. The striking gap is real, she has enough grappling experience not to panic when somebody shoots on her, and we have already seen her solve almost every style women’s MMA has produced.
The problem is that version of Nunes has not fought since 2023.
Coming back after more than three years and immediately facing Harrison is about as difficult a return as she could have chosen. Harrison does not need to beat Nunes everywhere. She can make the fight physical, spend long periods controlling the clinch and force Nunes to defend position after position instead of allowing her to settle into a striking rhythm.
I think Nunes probably has the better moments on the feet, particularly early, and I would not be surprised if she lands the hardest punch of the fight. The longer it goes, though, the more I expect Harrison’s strength, pressure and control time to become important.
The neck surgery stops me being overly confident because we simply do not know how Harrison’s body responds until she is competing again, but assuming she is fully recovered, I think she does enough across five rounds to retain the belt.
My prediction is Kayla Harrison by unanimous decision, probably in a competitive fight where Nunes wins rounds rather than getting dominated.
Who Wins Harrison vs Nunes?
What makes this matchup so good is that neither woman really needs it for the same reason.
Nunes already has the legacy. She could have stayed retired and nobody would have questioned what she accomplished, but beating Harrison after three years away and becoming champion again would add something completely different to an already ridiculous career.
Harrison has the belt, but beating Amanda Nunes would give her something a championship alone cannot.
It would give her the biggest win available in women’s MMA.
That is why UFC 334 feels bigger than a normal first title defence. Harrison is technically defending her championship, but in many ways she is also fighting for the right to prove that the division genuinely belongs to her now.
I think she does it, but I do not think Amanda Nunes makes it comfortable.
For the latest completed fights and scorecards, visit our UFC results 2026 page, while more previews and fighter updates can be found on the BetVictor UFC and MMA hub.
