Caraway still ‘willing’ to take non-title fight, but wants to ‘keep moving up the ladder’

Bryan Caraway cemented his position in the top five of the official UFC bantamweight rankings this past weekend when he upset the highly-touted Aljamain Sterling, delivering him his first professional loss. It was a back-and-forth fight on the mat, but Caraway pulled away in the later rounds and extended his winning streak with a split decision victory.

Sterling was very determined to fight Caraway and once the fight was booked, “Funk Master” was just as determined to shut the underdog down at UFC Fight Night 88 on May 29.

According to Caraway, Sterling’s hype and trash talk just made it that much better of a victory.

“Anytime you can get a win in the UFC, it feels absolutely amazing,” Caraway told BloodyElbow.com’s The MMA Circus. “And to get a win over such a talented, highly-regarded opponent as himself. Undefeated, everything was extremely satisfying. To be the first guy to give him his first loss, beating the number four guy in the UFC. All the combined, it was awesome.”

Sterling is a very confident fighter, like any undefeated up-and-comer should be, with a handful of very high-level wins under his record. But “Kid Lightning” believes Sterling was over-confident going into the fight with him, which ended up being one of many things that cost him his first professional loss.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I think that’s why, partially, the reason why he called me out. He was just so confident. It’s hard not to be when you’re finishing top 10 guys. He finished Mizugaki, he finished Johnny Eduardo. Those are tough dudes. Having an undefeated record puts you up a little bit on a pedestal I think. That’s what ultimately got him in trouble.”

Caraway struggled early on as Sterling was able to control him for the majority of the first five minutes. He blames his slow 1st round on cage rust. Prior to this past weekend, he hadn’t fought since a July 2015 win over Eddie Wineland. That said, cage rust didn’t stop him from winning. He got his rhythm back in the second and third rounds and grinded out the New Yorker for the rest of the fight.

“He did a good job first round, but to be honest I contribute it a little bit to more of a mistake I made,” he said. “And then he just kind of capitalized on it and was able to control the whole time. I don’t feel he really did much at all in the first round. He shot a single leg, I stuffed a single leg. I don’t know if the average fans could tell, but I was actually attacking a certain type of special front choke. A little bit of my bad and his good. I didn’t really secure the choke before I put pressure on, and he moved out of the way at the same time from the choke and ended up getting my back. I was just a little bit too lackadaisical there.

“Whether it was just being too cautious, I think the ring rust really played into that first round, being a slow starter and not fighting for a long time. I just made adjustments. Having a great corner of coach Robert Follis, Erick Nicksick, Miesha (Tate), they came back and we readjusted the game plan. It took me the first round to realize, ‘Okay man, I’ve been here before.’ I knew exactly what to do, we made those adjustments and I came out there, put the pressure on him, took him down, and felt like I was able to do a lot more damage when I was on top of him than when he was on top of me.”

13 of 25 media members scored the first round a 10-8 for Sterling (courtesy of MMADecisions.com), including BloodyElbow.com’s Dallas Winston. Fortunately for Caraway, all three judges saw it a 10-9, which ultimately awarded him the win (it would’ve been a draw if two or more judges saw the first round as a 10-8).

Caraway doesn’t think Sterling was even close to dominant nor had him in trouble enough to earn a 10-8 scorecard.

“I think that’s absurd,” he …

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