RIO DE JANEIRO — Kayla Harrison has daydreams, like the rest of us. You know — fame, fortune and all the benefits that go with it. The problem for Harrison is that, for the last few years, she watched someone else fulfill those dreams, leaving her with a special kind of awareness of what could have been.
Harrison could have followed Ronda Rousey, her former judo training partner, into MMA. Rousey, of course, did get rich and famous. Harrison has toiled her way to stardom on the judo circuit — she made history by winning the first-ever American Olympic gold medal in the sport in London — but in a specialty sport like judo, stardom has a ceiling.