Dillashaw vs. Barao 2: The Rematch Nobody Wanted, This Time for Free

The coolest thing about Saturday's UFC on Fox 16 event is that it features a legitimate world UFC title fight in the main event of a network-televised free card.

The idea behind that is you put champions who can't pull a number on pay-per-view in front of your largest possible audience—and that's exactly what Fox represents—and hope they put on a stunning performance so that, when they move back to PPV, they can pull bigger numbers after they've been exposed to a national viewing audience.

That's the theory, anyway. The jury is out on whether it works. The UFC gave Demetrious Johnson maximum exposure as the headliner of three Fox events; when he moved back to a headlining role on pay-per-view, UFC 174 reportedly drew an estimated 115,000 buys, among the lowest in the history of the UFC, according to MMAPayout.com.

And he's headlining September's UFC 191 card in Vegas. Let me tell you right now that there just isn't much anticipation for that one. Not from any corner.

Still, that's the idea behind putting T.J. Dillashaw vs. Renan Barao on free television.

It's a rematch that the UFC is selling as "the one we've all been waiting for," when in reality I don't think anyone on Earth—outside of Barao, his camp and his friends—has been clamoring to see it. That's because rematches, by their very nature, are best used in one of three scenarios:

1. Two fighters have a very close fight. 
2. A fighter scores a total crap decision win over the rightful winner.
3. A former champion/challenger loses and then works his way back into title contention.

None of these three options applies to Dillashaw vs. Barao 2.

Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports

The first bout wasn't even remotely close. To say that Dillashaw kicked the stuffing out of Barao and then stole his soul might be something of an understatement. And it wasn't even a decision at all; Dillashaw finished him in the fifth round.

There was little doubt who was the better fighter.

But in beating Barao, Dillashaw upset the applecart. The UFC had spent generously to promote Barao and constantly trotted out a red-faced, spittle-spewing Dana White to scream about how Barao was the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. (This despite the fact that Jon Jones was still right there on the roster.)

And then Dillashaw utterly wasted Barao, and all that money went up in smoke. So the UFC, sensing a chance to recoup its losses, immediately booked a rematch between the two and told us that we'd been waiting to see the rematch!

We hadn't been waiting, of course. Because again, the first fight was definitive. Joe Rogan, standing in the middle of the Octagon, called Dillashaw's performance the greatest he'd ever seen in the UFC. That's not exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to lead into an immediate rematch.

But it was booked for UFC 177 anyway, and then Barao—being the total professional he is—had what we'll nicely call a "weight-cutting incident" during fight week. He was hospitalized and yanked from the fight, and the UFC replaced him with Joe Soto. Barao returned a few months later to beat Mitch Gagnon by submission, and the UFC once again had its excuse to put him back in a title fight with Dillashaw.

And so here we are once again, faced with a rematch that's sold to us as one of the most anticipated in UFC history. And that's just a load of crap, because it is not the most anticipated rematch in UFC history.

I'd even say that it's not anticipated at all. It's a rematch of a fight that the UFC couldn't wait to make because it had invested a lot of money in the former champion. And the company is putting it on free TV because it knows people aren't willing to pay for it.

But this will work out in Dillashaw's favor. If he goes out on Fox, dominates Barao and puts him away like he did the first time? That's good for him. That's good for his eventual move back to pay-per-view. That makes him an interesting attraction that people will begin paying to see, because he has a unique and exciting style and finishes fights.

And it moves him ever closer to an eventual big-time fight with former champion Dominick Cruz, which will likely be the biggest 135-pound title fight ever.

But first, Dillashaw needs to get through Barao. Given what we saw the first time around, it isn't difficult to imagine him doing just that.

And after that, perhaps we can move on from this forced Barao thing to something a little more interesting.

Jeremy Botter covers mixed martial arts for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.