(Video courtesy of YouTube/MMADigest)

Dana White was in Toronto yesterday with a handful of the fighters from the UFC 129 card and although he didn’t drop any remarkable news during the press conference, a few interesting tidbits came out during the fan Q&A session they did at Rogers Centre.

Jake Shields talks UFC 129 vs Georges St. Pierre – Watch more Funny Videos

By CagePotato contributor Brian J. D’Souza

The April 30th UFC event at the Rogers Centre in Toronto will play host to pound-for-pound king Georges St. Pierre, a French-Canadian superstar who helps move everything from action figures to videogames for his UFC bosses. Jake Shields hasn’t quite reached that level of mainstream acclaim, but when he faces off with GSP at UFC 129, he’ll be carrying a 15-fight win streak thanks to an arsenal of tools that could be the wildcard against an experienced champion who has yet to show any stylistic weaknesses nor signs of decline.

Catching up with Shields during a tour of Ontario, the friendly Cesar Gracie team member seems to effortlessly surmount a packed schedule of seminars, media appearances, interviews, photo shoots and autograph requests with a smile and his positive attitude. A former welterweight champion in Elite XC and middleweight champion in Strikeforce, Jake wants to add the most important belt to his collection — the UFC 170-pound title.

Shields won’t play into a war of words with St. Pierre in the grand tradition of B.J. Penn, Dan Hardy and Josh Koscheck. “He’s a great guy. I don’t know him that well, so I’d have no reason to suspect him as being fake,” Shields says.

As he once told FIGHT! magazine’s Danny Acosta, “When you’ve been in fights, fighting 10 people at once, people with knives and bats and guns and whatnot, it definitely takes fear away in the cage,” however, on this day, Shields shied away from elaborating too much on his tumultuous youth.

(Video courtesy YouTube/robalicious415)

- Arctic laser popcorn (doubleviking)

 - Rory MacDonald vs. Nate Diaz slated for UFC 129 in Toronto (mmafighting)

- MMA Supremacy review (gamefront)

– SBNation kills off WatchKalibRun, MMA4Real and Boxing Bulletin (watchkalibrun)

- Spiderman vs. Captain America (therugged)

– Watch Diego Sanchez’s first ammy fight (middleeasy)

- How social media has changed our lives (bullz-eye)

– Belforts says he’s not going to dance around Silva (thegarv)

- 10 things you lose when you commit (askmen)

- Milwaukee quietly declares yesterday Anthony Pettis day (fightlinker)

- 11 boxing rappers and vice versa (mademan)

- Falcao out of UFC On Versus III (mmaweekly)

- America’s homeless got talent (tuvez)

- Edgar-Maynard III penciled in for UFC 130 (sherdog)

- Cameron Diaz talks Green Hornet biology (break)

- Lowered expectations: Anderson Silva wants to fight Bisping in the UK(espn)

(Video courtesy Sportsnet)

During last night’s episode of Sportsnet’s MMA Connected, the show’s host "Showdown" Joe Ferraro revealed that if Mark Hominick handily beats George Roop at UFN 23 and comes out of the fight without injury, he will fight Jose Aldo at UFC 129 in Toronto on April 30.

"If London, Ontario’s Mark Hominick can defeat George Roop and come out unscathed at UFC Fight Night 23, look for "The Machine" to earn a title shot versus featherweight champion Jose Aldo," Ferraro stated.

Hominick was supposed to fight Aldo for the newly-minted UFC featherweight strap at UFC 125, but he was forced to pull out of the bout when the broken hand he went into his WEC 51 fight with Leonard Garcia with didn’t heal in time for him to resume training. He was replaced by Josh Grispi on the card, but after Aldo bowed out of the fight with a neck injury, the 22-year-old lost his place in line for the title shot when he dropped a unanimous decision to the champ’s replacement, relatively unknown fighter Dustin Poirier.

A veteran of 27 MMA bouts, Hominick’s only losses in the past six years have come at the hands of three highly-touted fighters: Grispi, Rani Yahya and Hatsu Hioki. His second bout with Hioki, which he lost by a razor-thin majority decision and was contested under the TKO banner is widely regarded as one of the greatest featherweight fights in Canadian MMA history.

For an idea what Aldo-Hominick might look like, check out that fight after the jump.

("Alright, one more. Then I seriously have to take off, you guys." PicProps: Las Vegas Sun)

Assuming you posses the ability to express normal human emotions – meaning everyone reading this except psychopaths, certain brain injury patients and Nicholas Cage – you should’ve felt a bit torn this weekend when rumors started to trickle out that Randy Couture has “verbally agreed” to fight Lyoto Machida, possibly at UFC 129 in Toronto.

First reaction: Pretty cool fight, right? The consummate game-planner versus the man who, despite recent back-to-back losses, remains the light heavyweight division’s most intriguing puzzle. It sort of makes sense for both guys too, I mean, as much as paying a 47-year-old man money to get punched in the head can ever make sense. For Machida, it would be a nice win for a guy who sorely needs to prove he still belongs among the 205-pound elite. For Couture, well, he said he wanted interesting challenges and opponents don’t get much more interesting than Machida.

Second reaction: Hold up. Should we really be excited about this? Like, aren’t we just enabling the old man now? And at what point do we all become complicit in Randy Couture’s demise?

(Video courtesy YouTube/TheFightNetwork)

Despite the growing hype surrounding a fight between him and outspoken former number one UFC middleweight contender Chael Sonnen, Wanderlei Silva says he’s still hoping he will be matched up with fellow slugger Chris Leben for his return bout following knee surgery. Silva mentioned a couple months back that he would be fighting Leben in Toronto, which seems like it must have been in the works, at least at the time considering "The Axe Murderer" was privy to the info that the UFC was likely holding a show in the Canadian city in the spring before it was announced.

"I want to make my next fight for here in Toronto, maybe in April. I started my rehab for my knee right now and I started to lift weights, but I don’t train martial arts right now. I’m gonna wait two weeks to see what’s gonna happen with my knee," Wand explains. "If it feels better I’m gonna fight on the first show in Toronto. [Chris Leben] is a really good opponent. His style’s like my style. He likes to fight. He’s no afraid to fight toe-to-toe, so he’s a good opponent. He’s going to fight right now in one of the next UFCs, but I want to fight against him."

As far as a possible fight with Sonnen goes, Silva thinks that unlike Anderson Silva, he’ll have the upper hand if the bout comes to fruition, citing a certain sparring session he had in Vegas with the testosterone deficient, smack talk abundant middleweight to support his opinion.

"Sonnen, he’s more of a wrestler. I think that’s a good fight for me, too," Silva says. "I trained with him one time at [Xtreme Couture] and I killed him there, you know? I think he’s a good opponent too. He’s tough.

(Brazilian Vinny, Mauricio Rua, and Brazilian Steve-O celebrate their big moment. Photo courtesy of the Las Vegas Sun)

According to a new report from Sportsnet, the UFC light-heavyweight title fight between Mauricio "Shogun" Rua and Rashad Evans is expected to headline a March 19th event at the Prudential Centre in Newark, New Jersey. Tito Ortiz’s last-last chance against Antonio Rogerio Nogueira is also slated for the show. Both fights had been previously tied to a March return to Abu Dhabi, leading to speculation that the event might not happen at all. As UFC U.K. president Marshall Zelaznik said back in November:

"I know there’s been talk of March 19 potentially happening. While we’re looking at delivering a pay-per-view (event) around that time, nothing’s been defined in terms of whether Abu Dhabi gets it or someone else."

March 2011 is already a busy month for the UFC, with UFC on Versus 3 slated to take place on 3/3 and a possible UFC Fight Night event on 3/26. In March 2010, Newark hosted UFC 111: St. Pierre vs. Hardy, which drew a passionate East Coast fan contingent. Until New York gets its head out of its ass, this might be the closest thing to an annual NYC event that we’ll get.