For The Ultimate Fighter Season 11, Chuck Liddell hand-picked Strikeforce Middleweight champ Jake Shields as an assistant coach.  Now the UFC Hall of famer is hoping the Strikeforce champ makes his debut inside the octagon soon.

“I hope he comes over to the UFC, it’d be great” Liddell said Monday on a TUF 11 conference call. “He’s got a fight coming up soon at 185. He moved up to 185 … He really needs to come back to his weight class (at 170), come back to the UFC and make a run at it there.”

Before TUF 11, Shields and Liddell had known eachother prior.  Over ten years ago, before Shields went to Ceaser Gracie he turned to Liddell’s SLO Kickboxing Academy for two years of his MMA career.

Shields, who went on to establish a powerful jiu-jitsu game, which he dubs “American Jiu-Jitsu,” reversed roles with Liddell recently, passing along technical details to the UFC Hall of Famer while on the show.

“Jake’s one of the guys I used to train, actually,” Liddell said. “He’s come a long way with his stuff. He’s done some interesting stuff — he’s got some interesting fine points with his front chokes, and things like that. I grabbed a couple of things (from him).”

As Shields approaches his April 17 fight against Dan Henderson with only one fight left on his Strikeforce contract, Shields appears closer and closer to joining the UFC.

Shields has long talked about facing the best opponents and UFC president Dana White as of late has openly told reporters that he would be interested in adding Shields to the promotion’s welterweight roster.