Kayla Harrison (Ohio, 1990) is an imposing woman. She strong, with presence, 1.73 tall and 70 kilos. Double Olympic medalist in judo and champion of mixed martial arts (MMA) in the company PFL. Someone no one would want to have a problem with. At least now, because being just a girl she was sexually abused by her trainer. Something that marked her life, but currently serves as a motivation to change the world… not without pain.
“Sexual abuse is a wound that remains open for life”. This is how Kayla Harrison explains it, without hot cloths and with an integrity that she has not achieved from one day to the next. “I cannot believe that society is not educated on this matter. It seems that no one cares about the victims”. Quite the opposite of what she intends to do from a privileged position.
“Wrestling gives me the opportunity to change the world. Receiving a message from a girl who says that she was raped, that she struggles to get out of bed and that my book gave her hope means everything to me. She makes it all worthwhile. I will fight a thousand battles if I can change the lives of a thousand people”, explained Harrison in an interview for the BBC.
At just 16 years old, she confessed that her coach had abused her for six years. Justice complied and she ended up behind bars after her mother denounced him. It was then that Kayla began to live again, gradually freeing herself from that burden that weighed her down mentally. Although before all that there was a lot, a lot, darkness. “When I was a teenager, I was suicidal. I didn’t want to live. It got to a point where I would run away from home, kill myself or say something.”. Fortunately, he opted for the third option.
“When you are sexually abused, when you are going through any difficulties in your life, it is very difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I hit rock bottom, I didn’t mind doing judo. I didn’t want to live anymoreHarrison recounted. Years later, she won the gold medal in London 2012 and Rio 2016, to make the leap to MMA in 2018, following in the footsteps of her training partner and first female champion of the UFC Ronda Rousey. The struggle, the fighting, made her the woman she is today.
“Winning a gold medal for your country is amazing, but it’s a very selfish thing to do. To make a difference in this world, to make a positive impact, that is truly my greatest achievement.”, admitted the fighter. Currently, Kayla Harrison is undefeated in MMA, with a record of 13-0. Additionally, throughout her career inside the cage she has twice won the Professional Fighters League (PFL) million dollar championship.
However, not all the money in the world would give Kayla the happiness that she does get from her family. A family that took shape more than ever when in 2020 she got custody of her niece and her nephew when her stepfather died suddenly. “It wasn’t until I got older and had my kids that I realized you don’t have to be perfect to be loved.. You just have to be yourself. Now I leave from a different place. It is not from a place of needing to be loved, of needing to do this so that everyone loves me, it is that I do this because I love. I want to help people, I want to make the world better”, the champion is sincere.
Kayla has found the formula to combat pain and face her ghosts from the past with love as the best weapon. And it is that far from being carried away by hatred or channeling it inside the cage through the violence allowed by the rules of MMA, Harrison has recycled her past and has turned it into a teaching rather than a sentence. “I don’t feel sorry for myself or feel sorry for myself. I am grateful because I believe that everything happens for a reason, and that is why I think that I would not be what I am today if I had not gone through everything I went through. She wouldn’t be the person that I am, the fighter that I am, the survivor that I am, the mother that I am… She wouldn’t be Kayla if she hadn’t been through all of that. She wouldn’t be able to change the world the way I want to if all of that hadn’t happened to me.”
Video | The strange case of Hasbullah Magomedov, an adult who looks like a five-year-old
