Everyone faces rough patches in life that can sometimes spill into work. Professional fighters are not immune to this.

The ways in which that can affect their performance varies widely. For some, it might be easier to compartmentalize – or even channel the negativity into their displays. But for others, like UFC bantamweight Bryan Caraway, the emotional baggage can take its toll.

Especially when it’s baggage as heavy as what he’s had to carry.

As Caraway prepares to meet Pedro Munhoz at The Ultimate Fighter 28 Finale later this month, it seems the cloudy days are starting to clear up. And while life isn’t perfect, he’s a lot more “clear-focused” than he was in the lead-up to his UFC 222 battle with Cody Stamann – which involved, among other things, mourning his longtime coach, Robert Follis.

“When I beat Aljamain Sterling, I was coming off a real high, finally getting in a groove,” Caraway recently told MMAjunkie Radio. “And (Follis) ends up just battling depression, having problems. (He) ended up committing suicide four days after I took that fight.”

Caraway had known Follis, a beloved figure in the MMA community, since he was 18. The coach had remained with him through at least six years of his UFC career and was “like a father” to him. The coach’s tragic death, which Caraway had opened up about in the past, took an emotional toll on him.

“When I found out, it just crushed me so bad,” Caraway said. “Every day, I would cry that whole entire camp. I cried in the locker room, before the fight, just because he wasn’t there.”

But that wasn’t even the end of Caraway’s woes as he also dealt with injuries and added hardships in his family life.

“No excuses at all, but just putting it on the platter for everybody to know what I was kind of going through,” Caraway said. “Stamann is a solid guy, a good competitor, but I just feel like I’m at another level than him. Granted, I lost, but that happened, coach Follis kills himself. I had a lot of stuff going on with (retired fighter and Caraway’s ex-girlfriend Miesha Tate). She told me like literally five days later that she was pregnant; we had only been broken up a year at the time.

“Even though we’re still cool, and we had moved on, that’s still kind of hard to swallow. Like, man, you spend 10 years with somebody, and that kind of happens so fast. And then my dad was going through a lot of stuff; he’s actually in a mental home right now.”

Caraway explained that his dad is a war veteran, who did two-and-a-half tours in Vietnam. The experience left him dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, including relapses in which he believed he was still at war. For a while, Caraway said, they adjusted his father’s medication and things looked better.

But his condition has recently taken a turn for the worse.

“He got (Orange Agent) from the war, white phosphorus poisoning. He’s got shrapnel on his back from grenades,” Caraway said. “He’s won two Purple Hearts. He was in some crazy stuff. But they changed his medicine up, and he got better for a while, for almost a year since – that was, like, in January, whenever my camp was, through March – and then … his brain just finally shut completely down about a month-and-a-half, two months ago.

“It started off a little bit slow at the time, and now he’s completely in a different reality.”

Clearly, the timing wasn’t ideal heading into the match with Stamann back in March. But “it happens.” Caraway already had to pull out from two fights due to injury – against Luke Sanders and Jimmie Rivera – and wasn’t about to do it again.

“I want to fight,” Caraway said. “These people think I want to pull out. I want to fight these guys. I’m not afraid. I’ve fought forever. I’ve fought, like, bare knuckles. The only way to make money is for me to fight. The only way to grow my brand is to fight. This is my job.

“I don’t do anything else. So, to not want to fight top guys is ludicrous. It’s just been a rough go.”

Things aren’t perfect in Caraway’s (21-8 MMA, 6-3 UFC) life. But the bantamweight standout is certainly in a better place heading into the meeting with Munhoz (16-3 MMA, 6-3 UFC), who he respects both as a fighter inside the cage and and as an “upstanding human being” outside of it.

“I’m glad things are looking good,” Caraway said. “Clouds are clearing apart. Things are happening. Everybody is always going to have something in their life that’s going badly. Everybody’s going to have that. I think it’s minimized now. My dad, it’s kind of expected – he’s older, he’s 70 years old, but everything else in my life, I think, it’s starting to come around. There’s always a little bit of stuff here and there going on, but overall I’m feeling pretty emotionally solid.”

The TUF 28 Finale takes place Nov. 30 at The Pearl at The Palms in Las Vegas. The event airs on FS1 following early prelims on UFC Fight Pass, though the bout order hasn’t been finalized.

To hear more from Caraway, check out the video above.

And for his full candid chat with MMAjunkie about the emotionally challenging lead-up to his last bout, check out the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmvvcLHwH3k?start=6949&w=560&h=315

For more on the TUF 28 Finale, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.

MMAjunkie Radio broadcasts Monday-Friday at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT) live from Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino’s Race & Sports Book. The show is hosted by “Gorgeous” George Garcia, Brian “Goze” Garcia and Dan Tom. For more information or to download past episodes, go to www.mmajunkie.com/radio.