{"id":478271,"date":"2026-02-13T23:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T23:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/478271\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T23:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T23:00:07","slug":"undefeated-fighter-steps-in-to-fight-jacobe-smith-at-ufc-houston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/478271\/","title":{"rendered":"Undefeated fighter steps in to fight Jacobe Smith at UFC Houston"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Jacobe Smith has a new opponent for UFC Houston, but still faces a stiff challenge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The UFC <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ufc.com\/news\/updates-ufc-houston\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">announced<\/a> Friday that Josiah Harrell (11-0) is stepping in on a little over a week\u2019s notice as a replacement for an injured Seok Hyeon Ko to fight Jacobe Smith in a welterweight bout at UFC Houston next Saturday. The change marks Harrell\u2019s long-awaited debut after he was originally signed to the promotion almost three years ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cMuscle Hamster\u201d has won all but one of his fights by knockout or submission.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Smith, also undefeated at 11-0, has impressed in two UFC appearances since being signed off of the Contender Series in 2024. The 30-year-old made his octagon debut with a 73-second knockout of Preston Parsons and then followed that highlight with a second-round submission of veteran Nico Price at UFC 317.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">UFC Houston takes place at Toyota Center on Feb. 21. Former middleweight champion Sean Strickland headlines opposite red hot contender Anthony Hernandez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacobe Smith has a new opponent for UFC Houston, but still faces a stiff challenge. The UFC announced&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-478271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}