Matt Brown backs Steveson's future but warns Jon Jones is the wrong mentor after 12-second UFC knockout

Gable Steveson’s UFC career hit a serious low point at UFC 331 when Sean Sharaf knocked him out in just 12 seconds — the Olympic gold medalist’s second appearance in the promotion and, by most measures, his most damaging night yet. The Los Angeles crowd cheered the finish, and Steveson compounded the optics by leaving the octagon immediately without acknowledging his opponent or waiting for the official announcement.

Retired UFC welterweight Matt Brown, speaking on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer, refused to write Steveson off entirely — but he had pointed questions about the 26-year-old’s support network, specifically the involvement of UFC legend Jon Jones, who later took responsibility for ushering Steveson out of the cage so quickly.

“I’m not just going to concede I was wrong,” Brown said. “He got caught and he got knocked out. That’s not the end of it. George St-Pierre got knocked out. Demetrious Johnson lost — everybody lost. Don’t act like this isn’t MMA yet.”

Brown’s concern, however, extends well beyond the result itself. He pointed to the build-up to the fight — Steveson arriving at the arena with Jones, cruising down Hollywood Boulevard in a luxury car — as symptomatic of an attitude and an environment that doesn’t serve a fighter still finding his feet in the sport.

“Going to the arena with Jon Jones, driving down Hollywood Boulevard in a Mercedes or Rolls Royce or whatever it was — kind of expecting to win,” Brown said. “It doesn’t feel like Jon Jones is the right guy to be coaching him and guiding him through this. His responses to a lot of the negativity coming his way were absolutely terrible. Worded terribly, spoken terribly.”

Brown also raised broader questions about Steveson’s commitment to MMA as a discipline, noting that the wrestler has already tried his hand at WWE and the NFL before turning to the octagon. Whether Steveson has the genuine hunger to push through adversity, Brown argued, is the central question his camp needs to answer honestly.

“If Gable has the hunger, the motivation to really do this — he was in WWE and then NFL, so is MMA just another shot? Is he just throwing darts at the board?” Brown said. “Maybe he quits after this. But if he really has the hunger and motivation, I’m still on the same train. He’s going to smash everybody, and one day he’ll probably rematch Sean Sharaf and he’ll smash him, too.”

For Brown, the talent is not in doubt. The wrestling pedigree that made Steveson an Olympic champion at Tokyo 2020 remains a legitimate foundation for a UFC career. What surrounds that talent, though — the coaching, the mentality, the people in the room — may ultimately determine whether Saturday night becomes a footnote or a full stop.