ESPN contributor Shannon Sharpe announced Thursday he is stepping away from the network as he faces a $50 million lawsuit on allegations that he raped a woman whom he was in a relationship with. While he contends with that suit, additional incidents from his past have come to light.
Before Sharpe’s time at ESPN, when he was the cohost of FS1’s Undisputed, he was accused of choking a female production assistant in the workplace, two sources with knowledge of the incident tell Front Office Sports.
One source said Sharpe and Fox settled with the accuser for several hundred thousand dollars. There was no lawsuit filed against Sharpe in the incident.
A rep for Sharpe told FOS, “There was no incident of choking involving Shannon on the FS1 set. On one occasion, he and a few colleagues were involved in some light physical interaction in a playful context. Fox Sports later chose to resolve the matter privately. For further details, we recommend contacting Fox directly.” A Fox Sports spokesperson declined to comment prior to the statement from Sharpe’s camp and could not immediately be reached for follow-up.
Sharpe cohosted Undisputed from 2016 to 2023. The timing of the incident was unknown.
In 2010, Sharpe briefly stepped away from his role on CBS’s NFL Today studio show after he was accused of sexual assault. He returned to the network after a restraining order was dismissed.
Earlier this week, a woman filed a lawsuit in Nevada accusing Sharpe of raping her. The woman, represented by attorney Tony Buzbee, who has previously filed suits against Deshaun Watson, Jay-Z, and Diddy, said in the suit that she was 19 when she met Sharpe at a gym in Los Angeles in 2023. Sharpe is 56.
The lawsuit claimed that the two had a consensual relationship that grew tense when Sharpe went on Instagram Live last October, apparently having sex with another woman. (Sharpe said at the time that he went live by accident.)
Buzbee later released audio of Sharpe threatening to choke the accuser. Sharpe’s attorney, Lanny Davis, has claimed that Sharpe and the plaintiff engaged in role-playing. He acknowledged in a call with reporters earlier this week that the leaked audio was real, but said that it was in the “heat of the moment,” and not meant literally.
“It is our opinion, this is a classic case of blackmail. The plaintiff demanded tens of millions of dollars in a proceeding that’s called mediation. In return for her not publishing this tape, which she showed the lawyers for Mr. Sharpe,” said Davis.
Davis said that Sharpe had offered at least $10 million to settle the suit before it was filed, and that they were blindsided when talks broke down and news of the lawsuit broke in the media.
“The relationship in question was 100% consensual,” Sharpe wrote on X in response to the suit in which the Jane Doe alleged rape.
“At this juncture I am electing to step aside temporarily from my ESPN duties. I will be devoting this time to my family, and responding and dealing with these false and disruptive allegations set against me. I plan to return to ESPN at the start of the NFL preseason.”
ESPN said in a statement, “This is a serious situation, and we agree with Shannon’s decision to step away.”
