{"id":79537,"date":"2025-12-07T18:41:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T18:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/79537\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T18:41:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T18:41:11","slug":"sean-strickland-returns-in-ufc-houston-main-event-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/79537\/","title":{"rendered":"Sean Strickland returns in UFC Houston main event next year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Sean Strickland is back in the main event spotlight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">During Saturday\u2019s UFC 323 broadcast, it was announced that Strickland (29-7) is set to fight Anthony Hernandez (15-2, 1 NC) in the middleweight main event of UFC Houston, which takes place at Toyota Center on Feb. 21.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">UFC Houston marks the promotion\u2019s first visit to the city since February 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Prior to that incident, Strickland went on a dramatic run that saw him upset Israel Adesanya to become UFC middleweight champion, lose a close split decision to du Plessis, win a decision over Paulo Costa to earn a rematch, and then lose to du Plessis again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Hernandez is one of the hottest fighters in the UFC\u2019s 185-pound division. \u201cFluffy\u201d has won eight straight fights, including finishes of Roman Dolidze, Michel Pereira, Roman Kopylov, and Edmen Shahbazyan. He was most recently scheduled to battle Reinier de Ridder at UFC Vancouver in October in what could have been a No. 1 contender fight, but was forced to withdraw due to an injury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sean Strickland is back in the main event spotlight. During Saturday\u2019s UFC 323 broadcast, it was announced that&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57,1194,38902,38903],"class_list":{"0":"post-79537","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\/79537","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=79537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}