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\u201cMuscle Hamster\u201d has won all but one of his fights by knockout or submission.<\/p>\n
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
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…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57,1194,38902,38903],"class_list":{"0":"post-164316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-houston","9":"tag-houston-headlines","10":"tag-houston-news","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-ufc","13":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}