Renan Barao 'would love' to fight T.J. Dillashaw in Rio at UFC 190

At first, Renan Barao was disgruntled when he found out T.J. Dillashaw needed to pull out of their upcoming title fight at UFC 186 due to a rib injury.

He was completely blindsided by the news, as he put it to Combate.

"I had just finished training. I was going home to have lunch when my teacher, Jair Lourenco, told me he had bad news. I asked him what it was and he said Dillashaw was out of the fight. I got pissed and quite sad, because I had never trained so hard for a fight before. I was focused and one thousand percent ready to bring the belt back to Brazil."

To drive his point home, Barao went onto Instagram to tell Dillashaw he could run, but couldn't hide, which he did in order to answer the trash talk he was getting from T.J. himself and other Team Alpha Male members.

"Dillashaw talked too much crap, so I talked back.  His team was saying the fight would be easy and all, so I only wanted to spice things up as well. Unfortunately, the fight had to be postponed. Whenever it's on again, I'll be ready. I was really focused during training because I wanted it to be totally different from what he was saying the fight was going to be. I hope he heals as soon as he can so we can fight and I can prove the doubters wrong".

But even after Dillashaw's injury and all the frustration, Barao begins to see a silver lining.

With UFC 190, a Rio de Janeiro card, approaching on August 1, he now thinks it would be a great date to claim his belt back, alongside Bethe Correia, who will also look to win the world title in her home country, against Ronda Rousey.

"I would love to fight in Brazil. There's a different, special flavor here. I fought here once and I felt a good energy, the crowd cheering. It would be a dream to fight for the belt in Brazil, if Dana White can make it happen, I would love it. I don't think T.J. would want to do it, but if he does, it would be great".

UFC 186 will still go down on April 25, but now it will be headlined by flyweights Demetrious Johnson and Kyoji Horiguchi.