Sokoudjou faced the heavy-handed former UFC veteran Houston Alexander on September 11, 2010, at Shark Fights 13. Sokoudjou landed hard leg kicks at the start of the fight, before landing a lunging left hand that dropped the Omaha native. Sokoudjou followed this up with more punches to Alexander's head, who used wrestling to keep himself from getting knocked out and was able to demonstrate amazing toughness by surviving Sokoudjou's brutal attack for the final three minutes of the round, even after being dropped a second time by a punch before implementing some ground and pound of his own at the end of the 1st round. Alexander also landed two illegal headbutts at the end of the round, and was warned by the referee but did not have any points taken away. In the 2nd round, Alexander came out and landed a series of hard jabs on the African fighter, who seemed to be tiring out. Alexander then landed more strikes before going into the clinch from which he rocked Sokoudjou with a series of punches before getting on top and landing many unanswered punches on Sokodjou, before the referee stepped in and stopped the fight at 1:31 in the 2nd round.