When her UFC career began, Miesha Tate often found herself relegated to the role of Ronda Rousey refuter.

Rousey, then women’s bantamweight champion, used the cameras and microphones constantly hovering around her to torment Tate with insults and criticism. It was then up to Tate to defend herself, which she typically did.

One notable exception came when Rousey attacked Tate’s transient training. Tate was well aware that her sampling of gyms across the West Coast alongside boyfriend, head coach and fellow fighter Bryan Caraway needed to cease. “I was always looking for a place to make a home,” Tate said. “I just couldn’t find the perfect spot.”

Tate is finally confident she’s discovered her fighting Valhalla. Coming to Las Vegas and making camp in the Valley’s most famous mixed martial arts gym, Xtreme Couture, has allowed her to transcend a reputation as Rousey rival and nomadic fighter.

Tate is now much more than that; she’s the UFC women’s bantamweight champion, the top female fighter in the world. On Saturday, July 9, she’ll look to defend the title in a pay-per-view bout against Amanda Nunes at one of the biggest events in MMA history, UFC 200 at T-Mobile Arena.

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First and foremost, Tate credits her current five-fight winning streak, peaking with an upset victory over Holly Holm in March, to the local team she built at the culmination of her journey. “It was a lot of trial and error definitely, but I felt like I learned so much from every place I trained,” Tate says. “It was like test-driving a bunch of cars to find out what you want, so when you make the purchase, you know you’re happy with it.”

If Tate’s career is like a car, she always felt like she had the right engine. Caraway motored her into the sport more than a decade ago when they met at Central Washington University. He was immediately struck by the former high school wrestler’s toughness, which shined through in training and particularly in Tate’s first amateur fight. She lost, but that was beside the point.

A knee shattered Tate’s nose in the first round, but to Caraway’s astonishment, that only made her fight more desperately. “Guys in the UFC get hit not half as bad as Miesha got hit, and they fall down in the fetal position and quit,” Caraway says.

He began dedicating himself as much to her career as his own. The pair achieved monumental success, as Tate won the Strikeforce championship—the top promotion for women’s fighters at the time—in July 2011. The reign was short-lived, however, because the first title defense came against Rousey, who submitted Tate and dislocated her arm with an arm bar. A rematch in the UFC was set a year later, which brought Tate to Las Vegas for an extended period to star on The Ultimate Fighter as a coach alongside Rousey.

Filming began right around the time Xtreme Couture hired Robert Follis as its head coach. The gym had fallen on hard times, losing all of its UFC fighters, after a golden period in the late 2000s when it housed champions like Forrest Griffin and owner and namesake Randy Couture. “The infrastructure and mostly everything was still there,” Follis says. “They just brought me in to create a spark.”

Tate and Caraway found a good fit in Follis, and in veteran local striking coach Jimmy Gifford. The only problem? The team may have accelerated too quickly. Tate leapt into full-time local training midway through her preparations for the second match with Rousey. She felt she was receiving invaluable direction, but was also confused by the clutter of voices. On fight night, she fell victim to another arm bar.

“We all had to get that synergy and get on the same page with bonding experiences instead of jumping midstride into it all,” Tate says. “We’re so much better now.”

The team got its next real test in January 2015. Tate came in as nearly a 2-to-1 underdog to Olympic wrestler Sara McMann, and looked even more helpless than the odds suggested in the first round. McMann knocked her down, breaking her orbital bone in two spots. Then Caraway spoke up.

“Bite down on that mouthpiece, put your chin down, come forward and beat this girl up,” Caraway remembers telling her. “F*ck this technical sh*t. You need to fight this girl.”

Tate went on to win the next two rounds to pull off a majority-decision victory.

More than a year later, Tate found herself in another dire situation against Holm with the title on the line. Down three rounds to one with only the fifth to go, Tate tossed Holm to the ground and pulled off a successful rear-naked choke.

“It felt like it was in a movie—it went slow, then reanimated into full life when she got the choke,” Follis says. “It was one of the greatest moments of my life. As far as showing sheer determination and work ethic, I can’t think of anything better.”

The victory came with a promise of a Tate-Rousey rematch, though Rousey has delayed her return since losing to Holm last November, citing injuries and other obligations.

“Ronda can go retire and never fight again,” Caraway says. “I don’t care, because Miesha beat the girl that broke Ronda. To me, Miesha has nothing to prove.”

Still, Caraway concedes he would like to see Tate beat Rousey for everyone who said it would never happen. Since their last fight, Tate has assembled exactly what Rousey once accused her of lacking: a winning team.

“The best moment of winning the title for me was coming into the gym on Monday with my belt,” Tate said. “Everyone was really happy for me, proud of me. I was excited not for what people would say to me, but what I could say to the team. I was excited to say, ‘I couldn’t have gotten this without you guys.’”

UFC 200 July 9, 3:30 p.m., $205-$1,255. T-Mobile Arena, 702-692-1600.