Sean Sharaf Tells Joe Rogan He May Walk Away After Steveson Upset
Sean Sharaf told Joe Rogan he is not sure he can top the night he knocked out Gable Steveson, and that he had already told his team he might be finished if he won. The conversation, on The Joe Rogan Experience, came after a 12-second stoppage that Covers called the biggest outright UFC upset in DraftKings history.
Rogan opened by warning that a single night can swallow a career. “One of the problems with like a big event or a big moment is you can be defined by that big event and big moment, and that big moment can be like a centerpiece in your life instead of the path,” he said.
He then laid out the path he thought Sharaf was on: getting better, reaching world-class level, and fighting for a title. Sharaf pushed back. “Is it, though, Joe?” he said.
Sharaf said people were treating the finish as luck. “everyone’s making it seem like this is just a fing lucky punch, one shot,” he said. He said the goal, after he left the Marine Corps, was not a belt. “I want to be a UFC fighter, and like, it wasn’t like, oh, I want to be a champion, you know, it was just like, I just wanted to be in the organization and wear the uniform and just be able, be able to fing say I did that,” he said. Two losses made that uniform feel empty. “they gave me the uniform, but it didn’t feel like it.”
The win changed the math. “people say possibly the biggest upset in history, fing in my home, like, fing against all odds, I’m like, bro, like, It, it, like, can I beat that?” he said. “you leave the table when you’re up. That’s what they say.” Rogan asked if he was actually thinking about leaving.
Sharaf said he had already told Micah, a psychologist at the PI, his training partner Sergey, and Gokor. “if I win this fight, the way, like, the way I’m visualizing, I like, I might be good with that because this is f***ing like, that was it, you know?” he said.
He tied the doubt to the years before the punch, not only to the size of the moment. “I’ve had zero sponsors, I got zero promo, I got zero, like, any kind of, like, support throughout this whole thing,” he said. He said he was scrambling for a corner and had to beg for help.
“it just made me fing like, no, I just put a little sour taste in my mouth, I was like, bro, like, fing, like, for what?” A scan added to it. “I got fing CT scan, they’re saying I got some fing brain matter and sht, I’m fing stitched up from head to toe, I got fing all types of injuries,” he said. “what am I doing it for, just f**ing for more money? For, for a belt, like, what, what am I doing it for?”
Rogan did not talk him out of it. “There’s nothing wrong with you walking away right now if you choose to do that,” he said. “The decision is always going to be entirely yours, cause it’s dependent entirely upon who you are, where you are, and I don’t know that.” He told Sharaf to let the night settle before choosing. He also joked that Sharaf should take mushrooms with his dog.
The result that started the conversation came at UFC 331 on September 19, 2026, at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Sharaf dropped Steveson with a left hook at 0:12 of the first round. He entered 0-2 in the UFC, both losses by knockout, and left at 5-2.
Steveson, a 2020 Olympic gold medalist, had been 4-0 and was listed around minus-2400, with DraftKings putting his win chance near 96 percent. Sharaf closed at plus-1200.
Ten days before the fight, an Instagram post from @sharafmma showed an Experian report dated September 10 with $688,146 in total debt, including $536,561 on credit cards, $121,777 in auto loans, $26,910 in collections, and $2,898 in other accounts. The caption read, “I borrowed a lot of money to get here lol.” After the win he told reporters he was about to file bankruptcy. He has not said the next fight is booked, and Rogan left the choice where Sharaf put it.
