Countdown To UFC 177: Dillashaw vs. Barao II
After Vitor Belfort was forced out of his scheduled UFC 173 main event against middleweight champion Chris Weidman, former UFC bantamweight champion Renan Barao accepted a short-notice title fight against rising challenger TJ Dillashaw o the Las Vegas, Nevada-based card.
Team Alpha Male product Dillashaw promptly shocked the world on May 24, knocking out Barao in the fifth round of a fight that will go down in history as one of the biggest upsets the Octagon has ever seen.
Before the fight, most people were talking about whether or not Barao should overtake Jon Jones and Jose Aldo on the pound-for-pound rankings; afterwards, they were wondering what happened.
Dillashaw rocked Barao with a huge overhand right in the opening frame, a shot that made Barao fight on autopilot. The once-dominant titleholder was granted an immediate rematch against Dillashaw in the main event of this weekend’s (Sat., August 30, 2014) UFC 177 from the Sleep Train Arena in Dillashaw’s backyard of Sacramento, California.
In the Countdown to UFC 177: Dillashaw vs. Barao II video below, Barao chronicles all of the things that went wrong heading into their first fight. They make sense, but they also sound like excuses as well.
With the Nova Uniao fighter now in the unfamiliar role of challenger, take a look at the video and decide if Barao truly will recover from the worst beating of his career to regain the 135-pound belt this Saturday night:
