Sherdog’s Upset of the Year

Larissa Pacheco heard all the can’t-win-the-big-one talk and turned that narrative on its head.

The heavy-handed and resourceful Brazilian sprang Sherdog’s “Upset of the Year” under the Professional Fighters League banner and took a unanimous decision from two-time Olympic gold medalist Kayla Harrison when their women’s lightweight final headlined the 2022 PFL Championships on Nov. 25 at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theater in New York. Pacheco swept to power behind 48-47 scorecards from all three judges, earning $1 million in prize money for her efforts.

Harrison entered the cage with a perfect 15-0 record as a -700 to -900 favorite. She made no excuses regarding the setback.

“She was just extremely physical this fight,” Harrison said at the post-fight press conference. “I feel like it was a different person in there, to be honest. She was much bigger, much stronger than I recalled, much more patient, obviously. There were a couple times she flurried and blitzed, but she kept her conditioning really well. She did a great job. She’s a champion.”

Harrison plowed a familiar path in the first round, where she looked to be in prime form. She tripped Pacheco to the canvas, applied oppressive top control and racked up points with body-head ground-and-pound, throwing punches with varying degrees of intensity. However, Harrison did not exact enough of a toll to discourage the former Jungle Fight champion. Pacheco rebounded in the second round, seized the initiative with an attempted guillotine choke and put the American Top Team star on notice. From there, they tested one another in a series of back-and-forth exchanges, on the feet, in the clinch and on the ground. Harrison secured multiple takedowns, but she either wandered into danger through submissions—she found herself trapped in a triangle choke in the third round—or was met with ferocious resistance from Pacheco’s hyperactive bottom game, as the Joao Bastos protégé snapped off rapid-fire punches and hammerfists from her back.

“It was good, but it wasn’t great,” Pacheco said through a translator. “There’s a lot of things that happened this fight that I thought were going to go one way for me and they didn’t. I obviously noticed that she was being frustrated with a lot of her takedown attempts, and with that, I gained confidence. I’m just happy I was able to stick with the strategy, stick with what we had planned in order to come out on top.”

When it came time for the decision to be read, Harrison’s face carried a look of resignation. Those doubts proved to be well-founded. Even for someone as accomplished as Harrison, it was a teachable moment.

“I just think that I talk a lot about legacy, and to me, my legacy isn’t just what I do inside of the cage but how I carry myself outside of the cage,” she said. “I think about what I want my kids to know, and I’m not ashamed of myself tonight. I’m proud. I went out there, I fought [and] I lost, but I can hold my head high and carry myself with dignity. I think that a real champion shows up in the good times and the bad, and I want kids everywhere to know that, listen, I fell down tonight. I fell flat on my face. I lost in front of the whole world, and it hurts. It’s going to hurt for a while, but it’s also an opportunity for growth. It’s an opportunity for me to become a better fighter, a better person, and that is part of my legacy. Not just the wins, but what I do during the losses, as well.”

It was a case of the third time being the charm for Pacheco. She had fallen short on two previous occasions against Harrison: once during the regular season in May 2019 and again seven months later in the women’s lightweight final at the 2019 PFL Championships. Pacheco lost all eight rounds to the Middletown, Ohio, native in their first two meetings, a few of them by 10-8 margins. All the while, she was taking notes and mapping out a strategy for when they faced one another again.

“I just noticed that I’m as good as her, and that’s what I picked up on in those first two outings,” Pacheco said. “I noticed in every single one of her fights, the girls that come in to fight her, they come in defeated. They know the outcome of the fight. Whereas I was staying close to her in our first two outings and tonight, as well, because I wanted the opportunity to land a big [right] hand. I wanted the opportunity to connect [with] a knee as she was coming to take me down. I knew I could capitalize on this moment, and tonight was the night.”

Pacheco does not expect her rivalry with Harrison to end here.

“Kayla has a rematch whenever she wants,” she said. “I’m happy to give it to her, and I know she’s going to come back even stronger.”