On Tuesday, former Strikeforce light heavyweight champ Muhammed ‘King Mo’ Lawal took to Twitter, after a hearing with the Nevada State Athletic Commission, to express his anger over one of the commission member’s comments.
Lawal, who received a nine month suspension and $39,000 fine for a positive steroid test from a Jan. 7 Strikeforce event, stated that the one commission member, Pat Lundvall, asked “Do you speak English? Can you read?”
‘King Mo’, who hales from the South, felt the comments were insensitive and hurtful, so he reacted that way on Twitter. Unfortunately for him, it also cost him his job as he was also released from contract by Zuffa Tuesday evening.
Speaking with BloodyElbow.com, Lawal was accepting of the situation, offering up his side of the story for others to judge themselves.
Who were you addressing in your Twitter posts, and why were you upset?
Mo Lawal: It was the woman at the hearing, but I can’t remember her name (ed note, it’s Pat Lundvall). She asked a question that I felt was worded kind of funny. She asked if I did research for my training. I didn’t get what she meant by the question, and she rolled her eyes and asked, ‘Do you speak English? Can you read?’ First she wanted to know if I had access to a laptop computer. I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ Then she asked about researching my training. I said, ‘What?’ That’s when she rolled her eyes and asked if I could read or write. I told her, ‘No, I have coaches and trainers that do that.’
The way she came at me was out of line. I was up front, and answered every question they asked.
Has anyone from ZUFFA contacted you or your management about the tweets you put out following the hearing?
ML: They contacted Mike (Kogan, Mo’s manager), saying that I should never have called her a bitch. I wasn’t calling her a bitch, the way you would say that to a female. To me, anybody can be a bitch. I meant it as saying she was cranky. I guess I should have said ‘the cranky female’, but the way she spoke to me, come on. That reminds me of stuff I used to hear in high school and college. If you don’t come from the South and been the minority, it’s hard to understand where I’m coming from. ‘Speak English.’ Nobody has every come to you and said that, but it’s happened to me plenty of times. It rubbed me the wrong way, and to be honest, it hurt me.
I feel like she pre-judged me by the way I was dressed too. Obviously, I couldn’t wear a suit. I mean, I have a fanny pack with a wound vac in it that has tubes running down to my knee. That has to run 24/7 for another week. I still have a PICC line in, and full wound dressings on my knee, so I’m limited on what I can wear with all that. I’m not saying she’s a racist, but I feel like she pre-judged me in a sense, and I didn’t like that.