We've been salivating over a potential epic-super-mega-fight between UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva and welterweight champ Georges St. Pierre for well over a year here at Bloody Elbow. 

Initially the UFC was reluctant to book the fight. Then they seemed to be ready to announce it at UFC 112. St. Pierre sat cage side and there was buzz that there would be a post-fight announcement. But Silva chose to jack around against Demian Maia and Dana White was in no mood to reward him with a mega-match.

In the aftermath, our own Michael Rome said that was more offensive than boxing's failure to book Mayweather vs Pacquiao.  I don't know if Dana White read that piece or not, but he began to budge on booking Silva vs GSP after UFC 124.

Georges St Pierre was initially resistant because putting on the muscle mass necessary to move up to 185 pounds will mean permanently abandoning the welterweight division. But with one exception, GSP has beaten all the available challengers at 170lbs. 

No it looks as if we're one hurdle away from booking the fight. Silva's work is done in the middleweight division (sorry Yushin Okami) and GSP just needs to beat Jake Shields in Toronto at UFC 129. 

Dana White addressed the Shields situation post fight (via MMA Weekly):

"I've been saying this fight is all just a dream fight right now. And everybody keeps acting like he's going to get past (Jake) Shields. I think Jake Shields loves that (expletive)," UFC President Dana White pointed out when speaking about GSP vs. Silva. "Jake Shields has been a low key guy his entire career and a lot of people don't realize what a record this kid has.

"I know how I felt, and I know how everybody in this room felt right now, and if you say otherwise you're a liar, thought that Dan Henderson was going to kill him. Dan Henderson was going to kill him and so did Strikeforce, and he didn't. So you can't count Jake Shields out."

MMA Weekly also got the following text from Shields:

"Yeah, I plan to spoil that fight."

Anything can happen in MMA, but I'm not going to abandon hope of GSP getting past Shields and getting into the cage with Silva.

I broke down the dream fight for Gal's Guide to MMA last year. Here's the matrix I put together (please note that the levels are relative to each other, ie GSP's kickboxing is only "solid" in comparison to Silva's.)