There’s a symmetry with rivals.
Anderson Silva’s UFC tenure could easily end in the same way as his greatest foe, Chael Sonnen: with a failed drug test and an unceremonious exit from the sport.
Georges St-Pierre followed nemesis Nick Diaz out of the Octagon and into a retirement that many people don’t think is going to stick, something Diaz himself knows a thing or two about.
Even Josh Koscheck and Paul Daley went the same way, off to Bellator where they distantly lob insults at one another in the spirit of the long con of a rematch.
For TJ Dillashaw and Renan Barao, there’s symmetry in how they each ended up at UFC on Fox 16 in Chicago on Saturday night.
They fought last May, with Dillashaw scoring one of the most shocking, dominating wins the sport has ever seen.
They were rebooked for August, but Barao was felled by a failed weight cut and never even made it to the scales. Dillashaw scored his only title defense to date, succeeding in a pay-per-view sparring session with a game, but outclassed Joe Soto, who was testing the champion’s mettle on only a few hours’ notice.
Barao later returned to the cage for his only fight since the Dillashaw pasting, winning a painfully unimpressive bout with Mitch Gagnon, where not even the thrust of his own countrymen behind him could bring the old killer out of the Baron. It was nothing to write home about, but it was enough for the UFC to push him back into a title fight.
The rematch was finally destined to happen at UFC 186 in April; however, this time it was Dillashaw who suffered from some pre-fight bad luck on his way to missing the event. He fractured a rib in training, and his chance to show people the first time was no fluke had to be pushed into the summer Chicago heat.
And now, a year in the making and with both guys having come full circle, it’s here.
Dillashaw enters the rematch a different fighter than the one from a year ago. He’s still full of swift, slashing movements and bounds around like some sort of optimized Gravitron.
The degree to which he’s fused his mind with coach Duane Ludwig is the closest thing the sport has seen to taking the brain of one fighter and placing it in the head of another. It’s a frightening idea for Dillashaw’s opponents given Ludwig’s expertise as a striker and the time they’ve now had to truly work on the finer points of the game together.
For Barao, he enters combat as a man with something to prove. The first time they met, Dillashaw was a prospect who needed the fight of his life to unseat the best bantamweight alive, and he provided it. This time, it’s Barao looking for that fight of his life, hopeful he can return to form after some 18 months of utter mediocrity.
Still, with the trudging to this rematch finally complete and the cage door set to lock, this remains Dillashaw’s first test as champion. He responded admirably to the Soto challenge, trucking through him with a protracted beatdown. But it was what he should have done.
In Barao he will see a man who knows what the top of the mountain is like and who’s anxious to perch there again, a man who is personally invested in both his dislike of Dillashaw and his capacity to rebound from the beating Dillashaw gave him. It’s a totally different beast.
We do know that Dillashaw is as hungry as they come, that he’s getting the best training imaginable between Ludwig and his membership in the Team Alpha Male circle and that he’s going to be improved from when we last saw him. That’s the biggest asset of winning a title before you’re fully developed: You continue to get better, and you continue to put space between you and the pack of challengers chasing behind.
A year is a long time for the champion to keep getting better, to keep evolving with the knowledge that he’d have to beat Barao again to prove himself.
And what of Barao? What do we know of him? He looked mostly the same the last time he was in action, and with more miles on his body and more outrageous weight cuts chalked up than maybe anyone in the sport, it seems unlikely that his trajectory of improvement will match Dillashaw’s. Plus, there’s always the concern that when a man beats you the way Dillashaw beat him the first time, you simply don’t ever come back mentally from it.
It all adds up to a fascinating main event for Fox, who will broadcast their first title fight since 2013. It’s a rivalry a year in the making, the closing of a loop and the type of thing that has more questions than answers going in but will provide only one answer that matters coming out—which man is the better man.
One thing is for certain, though: This is TJ Dillashaw’s first test as champion, and he’ll prove a lot with it should he leave Chicago with his gold intact.
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