Miesha Tate’s boyfriend has taken her loss to Amanda Nunes quite personally. In fact, Bryan Caraway feels it’s his fault that Tate lost the belt to Nunes in the first place.
Bantamweight contender Caraway doubles as Tate’s coach as well, and recently spoke about shouldering the blame for his girlfriend’s brutal loss to Nunes at UFC 200.
“It’s really hard,” Caraway said. “She worked so hard for such a long time to get there. The camp was good. Everything was really good leading up to the week of the fight. Then just everything seemed to kind of – it’s like, the camps that have been the worst camps ever, the fights have been the best weeks.
“The camp was so good. I think because it was so good, I felt almost a little lackadaisical to take some credit on my part, definitely on my shoulders, and I don’t think I was there like I should have been. I was probably overconfident.”
Tate was at the top of the MMA world after finishing Holly Holm and taking her belt at UFC 196, but her celebration was unfortunately short-lived. Just four months after winning the woman’s bantamweight world championship, Miesha Tate lost the belt to Amanda Nunes at UFC 200, where she was our-struck and submitted in the first round.
Caraway revealed that Tate’s camp suffered a setback during the week of the fight, but didn’t go into detail. The bantamweight contender himself admitted that Nunes was the best she’s ever looked that night, and that Tate’s fight-week fiasco couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
“Some stuff fell apart the week of the fight a little bit, and it was kind of rough,” Caraway said. “It is what it is. When you’re fighting for the UFC world title or the No. 1 spot in any particular sport, you can’t be on your A game. You have to be on your A+ game. You have to give 100 percent. You can’t have a bad day.”
“Some people go to work all the time and maybe have a bad day or spilled coffee or some little thing. Those little differences can make the difference between being world champ and not, and Amanda Nunes came out there and looked phenomenal. She was on point. She was crisp. My hat’s off to her.”
Do you agree with Caraway’s statement that his overconfidence affected Tate’s training and fight with Amanda Nunes? Sound off, PENN Nation!