Larissa Pacheco

The three-time PFL champion

Larissa "Pitbull" Pacheco is a three-time PFL season champion — women's lightweight in 2022 and 2023, women's featherweight in 2024. Her record stands at 22-4 across an MMA career that began in 2013 on the Brazilian regional circuit.

The 2022 PFL Championship final against Kayla Harrison — a 5-round decision win — was the first competitive loss of Harrison's MMA career and the moment Pacheco established herself as the most-credentialed non-UFC women's fighter in MMA.

The Brazilian foundation

Pacheco trained at Pitbull Brothers MMA in Rio under the Pitbull family coaching (no relation to the lightweight Pitbull brothers Patricio and Patricky Freire). Her early career included a Bellator stretch in 2014–2015 that produced two losses to Julia Budd at women's featherweight before the move to PFL in 2018.

The PFL transition was strategically important. The PFL season-tournament format — multiple bouts in a calendar year, with finalists earning $1M each — suited a fighter whose pressure pace and championship-rounds cardio matched the tournament demands. By 2022 Pacheco had won her first season championship, and the back-to-back 2023 and 2024 titles confirmed the sustained competitive level.

The Harrison series

The Pacheco–Harrison rivalry produced two bouts:

• PFL 5, August 2022: Harrison won the regular-season bout via 1st-round submission. Standard PFL season setup.
• 2022 PFL Championship, November 2022: Pacheco won the final via 5-round unanimous decision. The bout's structural pattern — Pacheco's pressure pace producing the takedown stuff and the cumulative striking that compromised Harrison's gas tank in rounds 3–5 — was the first time anyone had solved Harrison's judo-takedown game over a full bout.

The series has not continued past 2022 — Harrison's UFC transition in 2024 removed the PFL rematch possibility, and the cross-promotion bout that fans wanted has not materialized as of 2026.

Style

Pacheco's competitive identity is built on:

• Brazilian Muay Thai pressure: relentless forward movement and Thai-plum clinch entries
• Takedown defense: the structural advantage in the Harrison final — Pacheco stuffed multiple high-percentage takedown attempts
• Heavy hooks: the boxing weapon that landed cleanly across the championship rounds
• Championship-rounds cardio: training-camp work produces the round 4–5 capacity that's defined her PFL season titles

The Brazilian Muay Thai foundation traces through her early coaching in Rio and the broader Brazilian women's MMA scene that produced Amanda Nunes and Cris Cyborg.

Legacy

Larissa Pacheco's three PFL season championships make her the most-decorated non-UFC women's fighter of the early 2020s. The 2022 win over Harrison is the structural pivot point of the era — the first competitive loss of Harrison's MMA career and the moment that prompted Harrison's eventual UFC transition.

The cross-promotion comparison — Pacheco vs the UFC women's roster — remains theoretical as of 2026. The most-discussed hypothetical (Pacheco vs Harrison again, or Pacheco vs the eventual UFC women's bantamweight title-holder) would require contractual flexibility that neither the UFC nor PFL has yet shown.

The Brazilian Muay Thai template Pacheco represents — pressure pace, takedown defense, cumulative striking, championship-rounds cardio — connects directly to the broader Brazilian women's MMA lineage and confirms that the post-Nunes Brazilian women's scene remains championship-tier outside the UFC.