The fine handed down by the Nevada State Athletic Commission today to Strikeforce light heavyweight Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal just about puts a nail in the coffin of the “tainted supplement” defense.
Lawal was forced to give back his $15,000 win bonus and fined 30 percent of the purse he earned in beating Lorenz Larkin back at a Strikeforce event in January. All told, Lawal has to write a check for $39,000 on top a nine-month suspension also levied by the commission.
That’s a heavy price to pay for a fighter who has undergone an impossible series of staph infections and surgeries in recent months. Lawal has medical bills piling up. His manager has noted that Lawal’s medical costs have totaled over $100,000, and that’s not including his latest setback in recent weeks.
Let me point out one thing. I believe Lawal when he says he’s innocent. I typically don’t buy into the tainted supplement defense because it seems like an easy way out. But in Lawal’s case, I believe he’s telling the truth when he had no idea that a supplement he was taking included steroids. He’s proven over the course of a very long career in wrestling and MMA that he doesn’t need performance-enhancing drugs to help his game. Not in the slightest.
Lawal has taken, and passed with flying colors, numerous Olympic-level WADA drug tests. Those tests were far more strict than any he’s had to undergo since making the transition to mixed martial arts. To think that Lawal would suddenly decide that he needed synthetic help—especially against a fighter like Lorenz Larkin—is laughable and downright ludicrous at best.
But the decision handed down by the NSAC proves that commissioners just aren’t going to buy the tainted supplement defense, no matter how much credibility the fighter in question may have.
Cris Cyborg, the former Strikeforce women’s featherweight champion who tested positive for stanozolol in December, is using the same defense.
“People say the only way I have gotten to where I am now is the use of drugs,” she said. “They say I am a cheater. That’s not true. I just made the mistake of taking something that was supposed to help me lose weight. I did not know it was a steroid.”
Fighters have to be responsible for what they put into their bodies. If there’s a remote chance that something you’re taking could cause you to test positive for steroids, you simply don’t take them. The performance gains you may receive from supplements don’t and could never outweigh the costs of a lengthy suspension and fine.
Just ask King Mo. He found out the hard way.
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