Dakota Ditcheva has been drawing inspiration from Kayla Harrison’s journey.
Ditcheva (14-0) is set to face Sumiko Inaba (8-1) in the co-main event of the inaugural PFL Africa card this Saturday in Cape Town, South Africa. After competing eight times across 2023 and 2024 to win both the PFL Europe and Global tournaments, “Dangerous” enters this weekend’s bout coming off the longest break of her professional career.
During her time away, the 26-year-old watched her American Top Team training partner, Kayla Harrison (19-1 MMA, 3-0 UFC), submit Julianna Peña to capture the UFC bantamweight title—adding yet another accolade to her already impressive resume.
Harrison, a former Olympic gold medalist and two-time PFL world champion, only made her UFC debut in April of last year but has quickly cemented herself as one of the sport’s elite fighters.
“Yeah, it’s crazy. I’ve actually got goosebumps when you think about it,” Ditcheva told MMA Fighting. “Like her journey through MMA, or just through martial arts sport has been crazy.
“After she won out there was loads of things online, I was just reading it all because, for me, a journey like that — Olympic gold medalist, comes to PFL, cleans everyone out there. Goes to UFC, cleans everyone out there. Within two or three fights, she’s got the UFC belt. That journey that she’s been on is absolutely crazy.”
In the wake of her bantamweight title victory at UFC 316 in June, Harrison detailed the extremes she had to go to in order to compete at 135 pounds – two full weight classes below the division she won her PFL title in.
“For 15 weeks I’m on a diet,” she said. “Every day I walk 6 miles, bike 2 hours, orswim for an hour and a half. That’s on top of the 2 other training sessions I do each day. It’s really hard. I just have to keep telling myself that it’s chosen suffering and that it’ll be worth it.”
Ditcheva, who has rapidly become one of the biggest names in women’s mixed martial arts, says she’s been deeply inspired by Harrison’s relentless work ethic.
“The weight cuts, the dedication she’s got to training, when she’s saying in these interviews, she’s not missed a day running or biking, that girl is in the gym every morning, every afternoon, and between them sessions, she’s walking, she’s running,” Ditcheva explained. “She’s the hardest worker in that gym.
“So to have someone like that around us and set such an example like that for us girls in the gym is like second to none. That’s why we’re the best, best gym in the world because we’ve got examples like that around us. How can we not be inspired and want to keep working hard when we see people like Kayla Harrison doing that?”
