MIesha Tate & Brian Caraway learning to live & love in MMA
With Miesha Tate and Bryan Caraway both competing as professional mixed martial arts in the biggest stage, juggling the life of a fighter and a couple is tricky.
Miesha Tate and Bryan Caraway are the only couple to ever have competed in the UFC octagon. Miesha Tate is one of the women’s strawweight divisions best and Caraway is a rising prospect in the men’s bantamweight division. With both competing as professional mixed martial arts in the biggest stage, juggling the life of a fighter and a couple is tricky:
We’d get out of the gym and I’d be still trying to coach at home and talk about things, Caraway said. We had to set the cup down, so to speak. You know, you can hold a cup of water, and it’s not heavy, but if you hold a cup of water still for six, seven, eight hours, it’s going to feel like a million pounds.
While that aspect of their relationship has improved with the change in gyms, they said, one thing that’s hard to get used to is living their private lives in the public eye. Tate’s fans are many and they are largely male. A lot of them aren’t big fans of Caraway, and they don’t mind saying so.
They want to see her with Brad Pitt or some god or something, Caraway said. Nothing’s good enough. I get the brunt of all these jokes or bashed on, because all these dudes wish they were with her. …People are just so rough sometimes. They treat you like you’re an item and not like a human being. It can be a little frustrating.