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Former UFC title contender Anthony Smith will look to get back on track in August.
Smith is slated to meet Aleksandar Rakic on Aug. 29, sources confirmed to ESPN following a report by MMAPlay365.
The event, which has yet to be officially announced by the promotion, doesn’t have a finalized location.
Smith (33-15) is coming off a controversial, fifth-round TKO loss to Glover Teixeira last month. Both Smith’s corner and the referee, Jason Herzog, were heavily criticized afterward for not stopping the fight sooner because of all the damage Smith received in the latter portions of the bout.
In the end, Smith suffered a broken nose and broken orbital bone and lost two teeth during the fight, though he told ESPN afterward that he didn’t blame his corner or the referee and did not want the fight to be stopped sooner.
Smith is 1-1 since he lost a light-heavyweight title fight to champion Jon Jones in March 2019.
The 28-year-old Rakic (12-2) is considered one of the top prospects in the UFC’s light heavyweight division, but he is coming off a unanimous-decision loss to Volkan Oezdemir in December. That loss, his first in the UFC after he started 4-0, snapped a 12-fight winning for the Austrian-born fighter.