(It’s as if the province of Ontario is giving us the middle finger at every waking moment.) 

When you report on all things MMA for a living (or at least claim to) like we here at CP do, it becomes a rarer and rarer occurrence that something truly blows our collective minds. A botched drug test here, a DWI/Domestic Assault arrest here — none of these things really surprise us in the sense that they are completely unheard news stories. Rather, it is often the whos and whats of a given case that give us food for thought. In other words, it is not everyday that we are treated to a rampage across Southern California that really makes us sit back and ponder the peculiarity of a given situation.

Today is one of those days, Potato Nation.

For you see, our buddies at Fightlinker managed to come across a story originally reported by Sportsnet’s Joe Ferraro that involved Canada’s ever-budding amatuer mixed martial arts scene, and we felt the need to pass it along.

But first, a little backstory. For those of you keeping track, Ontario did not legalize mixed martial arts until the beginning of 2011, but the Ontarian (yes, that’s what they call themselves) response was overwhelmingly positive. UFC 129 became the fastest selling card in UFC History, selling over 55,000 tickets in just over two days. We’re talking about a card that had Jake f’ing Shieldzzzzz in the main event, people. The UFC returned to Ontario at UFC 140, and in both occasions, saw the usual mix of enthusiastic and knowledgeable fans in attendance, something that cannot be said for many other venues.

So one would think that when it came to determining a set of rules for which amateur MMA would be governed by, Ontario would have more than an infinitesimal inkling as to how the sport they loved so much was run. You would be wrong. So, very, very wrong.

A middleweight bout between Canadian standout Cory MacDonald (12-2) and well-travelled veteran Brendan Seguin (23-17-1) and a welterweight scrap between former TFC champion Ryan Ford (17-4) and WEC veteran Luis Santos (50-7-1) have been added to Bellator’s May 4 Bellator 67 card, set for Casino Rama in Rama, Ontario. CagePotato.com learned of the MacDonald-Seguin pairing and confirmed the rumored Ford-Santos bout today from sources close to both bouts.

(Somehow, we don’t think Ben will be smiling after this fight.)

Bellator Fighting Championships announced today that the previously unannounced April 6 event we broke the news about last week will feature a main event scrap between Bellator welterweight champion Ben Askren and season 5 tournament winner Douglas Lima.

As we mentioned, the event, officially named as Bellator 64, will take place at Caesar’s Windsor.

(Now that MMA is legal in Ontario, the bandwagon will undoubtedly carry in a glut of Dana White wannabes. Let’s hope the OAC knows how to weed out the legit promoters from the scumbags.)

It looks like the UFC might get beaten to the proverbial punch when it comes to holding the inaugural sanctioned MMA event in Ontario.

CagePotato.com has learned from a source close to the situation that several promotions, including San Jose-based Strikeforce and Edmonton’s Maximum Fighting Championship have applied for promoter’s licenses in Ontario and pending approval by the Ontario Athletic Commission, at least three shows have been penciled in ahead of the UFC’s April 29 show in Toronto.

Although none of the shows have been given the go-ahead by the province as of time of writing, a number of venues have been tentatively reserved — some by first-time promoters — across the province in such locales as Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton and Orillia.