UFC’s TJ Dillashaw To Face Renan Barao In Hasty Rematch

Underdog TJ Dillashaw just overwhelmed bantamweight champion Renan Barao last month in UFC 173 for five rounds before receiving the title in a technical knockout. And that’s who he’ll likely have to face again in his next fight later this summer.

UFC president Dana White, just before weigh-in in Vancouver on Friday for UFC 174, said while Dillashaw (10-2 mixed-martial arts, 6-2 UFC) clearly conquered Barao (32-2 MMA, 7-1 UFC) in the fight, that doesn’t take anything away from Barao’s decade of undefeated fighting.

“Tell me if I’m wrong,” White told MMA Junkie. “I think we sat there and we started looking through the list of guys to fight TJ, and there is a list of guys, which is a great thing, but how do you not give it to Barao, the guy who was undefeated all those years? I agree he got a five-round a**-whooping and got finished, but how does it make sense to not give him the rematch? And who doesn’t want to see it?”

Perhaps Dillashaw? After losing last fall to Raphael Assuncao, some assumed that Assuncao would now get a shot at the bantamweight title and a rematch with Dillashaw, and that could someday happen, White said. But Barao, who went 33 fights without a loss until Dillashaw came along, is primed for another chance, he added:

“When you watch that fight… people were losing their minds because nobody saw that coming,” he said. “They go in there and put on an unbelievable war. Is that not what you want to see again?”

After training for years with Team Alpha and its storied founder Urijah Faber, Dillashaw is clearly ready to come out of Faber’s shadow. In fact, said White, a match-up between Faber and Dillashaw is likely in the cards for the future. But not until after some unfinished business.

“Trust me,” White said. “That fight is one of the other ones that could happen too. Imagine we do the Barao fight and it sets up all these fights. We’ve got Dominick Cruz in there, as well. Guess what: Everything we’re saying is a home run.”

In recent months, rematches between Chris Weidman and Anderson Silva, Johny Hendricks and Robbie Lawler, as well as Alexander Gustafsson and Jon Jones have been bandied about and set in stone.

All these rematches have some wondering: Why so many at once?

White points to boxing and how some fighters end up facing each other several times over their careers: “How about (boxers Manny) Pacquiao and (Juan Manuel) Marquez are going to fight for fifth f**king time, and you think we do too many rematches? I think if you look at a fight like Barao and Dillashaw, the guy went undefeated for 10 years and lost one fight. I want to see that fight again. [Losing another fight] puts Barao in a really bad spot, but then Barao gets in line and continues to fight and we see where it goes from there.”

[Image courtesy of MMA Fighting]