You are stuck in that rut where you feel like you are not getting any better and it sucks up your confidence. The best way out of it is to spar with some smaller people and a couple of people who were newer to training. It helps to build the confidence because they are slower and the chaining together of combinations comes more easily and you will realise that you do know it all and can do it..
once you get some confidence back then go back to sparring with the better fighters, you may not win but you learn more from a loss anyway. It will help you by sparring as much as possible.
Good luck and stop over thinking it.
KW is right in that to get good at fighting you need to take what you've learned and start applying it.
But what you probably don't know is that most people don't get all they can out of sparring because all they do is free style sparring.
What you need to do to get your confidence up is get a partner, and work certain techniques. For instance, you might only do blocks while they use all of their techniques. Get good at the technique and gain confidence. Mix in free form sparring after working it some and see how you're improving. Then go back to working a technique or two and repeat.
The point is that by mixing things up and working on your weaknesses you'll get better and you'll gain confidence.
FYI I suggest this, as simply going out and getting beat on isn't going to help you improve nor is it going to help your confidence. And from your post it's clear that improving both will get you to where you want to be.
Train extensively under expert guidance.
You got to practice combos.
I have been training for years and although I have great technique and know all the combinations I just can't seem to put them together in sparring. I am very small and I always fight people bigger so I do struggling with that, I also know that im not very confident in sparring so how do I become a good fighter?
