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Since a positive steroid test following a win over Lorenz Larkins at the Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine event, former light heavyweight champ Muhammed ‘King Mo’ Lawal has been pretty quiet, pulling away from the public limelight.
On Monday, Lawal revealed to the SiriusXM Fight Club that after the bout he underwent ACL surgery and subsequently suffered a very bad staph infection, which was so bad that could have cost him his leg if it wasn’t for numerous surgeries.
(Props to BloodyElbow.com for the transcript)
Alright here’s the thing. All this happened like three weeks ago but I didn’t tell nobody. I was in the hospital with people texting me and I was trying to keep it like nothing was going on so there wouldn’t be any red flags. But what happened was I had surgery after the fight. I had ACL and macrofracture (?). The ACL wasn’t a big deal but the macrofracture was a bigger deal in my cartilage. One of the sutures got infected and I had to go to the hospital the day after the Rashad Evans/Phil Davis fight. I got blood taken out of my knee and taken to a lab. I was at my manager’s crib…Mike Kogan’s crib and all of the sudden my doctor’s like ‘hey, you’ve gotta come to the hospital right now’. And this is right after Chael won. So I went to the hospital before the Rashad Evans/Phil Davis fight and I watched the fight at the hospital. Then went into the surgery spot and woke up with the pick line in my arm and they were telling me I would be in there till Monday. I figured I’d go in there and clear my knee out and I’d be out the same night or the next night but I was in there till Monday. Then they checked out my knee again and took the temperature and the knee was still hot and swelling up. They decided to take me back into surgery to do another flush procedure to get the staph infection out. In twelve days I had five procedures to remove the staph and I’m staph free now. But now they’ve pushed IV medicine through my pick line that’s connected to my heart through my arm every day for six weeks.
This is the toughest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. The harded that I’ve experienced in my life. Spiritually and emotionally, man I’ll put it like this. I’m not religious at all. I was born to a Muslim family. Man this had me thinking I had to purchase the Quran and get back to my faith and start having more talks with Allah. Seeing my teammates come see me, it broke me down a few times man. Coach Mendez came and saw me a lot. Coach Bob, Paul Buentello, Dan Cormier…people on the team. Jermain Ramsey and Jenna…Phil. I just had so many people contact me and come through it was tough man. It pushed me. Mentally I’ll be a stronger person. I know I’ll be stronger and I’ll be a better fighter.