Brown Questions Steveson's Camp After UFC 331 KO

Former UFC welterweight Matt Brown has not given up on Gable Steveson despite the Olympic gold medalist's brutal 12-second knockout loss at UFC 331, but he believes the heavyweight prospect needs better guidance than what Jon Jones is providing.

Steveson was stopped by Sean Sharaf on Saturday in Los Angeles and immediately left the octagon without congratulating his opponent or waiting for the decision to be read. Jones later took responsibility for ushering Steveson out quickly, but Brown told MMA Fighting's The Fighter vs. The Writer podcast that the entire fight week raised serious concerns about who is steering Steveson's career.

Brown On Jones' Coaching Approach For Steveson

Brown pointed to Steveson's pregame activities with Jones, including a drive down Hollywood Boulevard in a luxury car, as signs of misplaced focus. "It doesn't feel like Jon Jones is the right guy to be coaching him and to be guiding him through this," Brown said, per MMA Fighting. He added that Steveson's responses to criticism were poorly worded and that Jones, Greg Jackson, and Mike Winkeljohn should have told the 26-year-old to go back into the cage and handle the loss with more grace.

Brown acknowledged that knockouts happen to everyone in MMA, citing Georges St-Pierre and Demetrious Johnson as examples of fighters who lost and came back stronger. He questioned whether Steveson is fully committed after stints in WWE and the NFL or if MMA is just another experiment. "If he wants this and he's hungry to be champion, he has that athletic ability," Brown said, using language that required paraphrasing. "I don't care what you say about it."

Brown maintained that with the right hunger, coaching, and training environment, Steveson remains capable of dominating the heavyweight division and eventually avenging the Sharaf loss. But he warned that the entire fight week was a disaster for Steveson from a public relations, personality, marketing, and fighting standpoint. Steveson has not announced his next move since the knockout.

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• MMA Fighting — Matt Brown isn’t giving up on Gable Steveson but questions if he has the right people guiding him: ‘Jon Jones is not the way’