PFL pulls Julia Budd from Kayla Harrison fight who instead will now face Aspen Ladd

Details about this strange incident are still coming out, however the Professional Fighters League has made the decision to pull Julia Budd from her scheduled Nov. 24th fight as a showcase bout on the 2023 PFL Championships behing held in Washington D.C. and instead have decided to replace her with Aspen Ladd.

According to details released by PFL, Julia Budd “refused to fulfill her contractual obligations.” although no further details were given, an interesting statement giving Julia Budd appeared to be the more active of the two fighters with promotion of the bout via interviews and a review of her social media shows that Julia Budd had invested in training camp for the Kayla Harrison fight traveling to Arizona to work with Ready Fight Gym the home of Henry Cejudo and Santino Defranco. No word yet on exactly what contract obligations Julia Budd was not fulfilling but it appears she was training and promoting the fight prior to her being removed from the fight card.

Ladd is currently 2-1 in the PFL with a split decision win over Julia Budd and a decision loss to Olena Kolesnyk before securing an armbar over Karolina Sobek in June of this year.  Despite 2 wins, Ladd did not score enough point to make the PFL Playoffs this season.  The bout against Harrison will now take place at 150lbs, instead of the scheduled 145lbs despite it being reported that Ladd was already in training camp as a “backup option”.  Kayla Harrison has not competed since her 2022 loss to Lrissa Pacheco who is in the finals for the PFL Featherweight World Championship. Julia Budd a former Bellator MAM champion lost a split decision to Larissa Pachecho during the PFL regular season.