By all accounts, Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal had a pretty rough Tuesday.
Lawal was first fined $39,000 and suspended for nine months by the Nevada State Athletic Commission during a hearing just a stone’s throw from the old Las Vegas Strip. This was a kick in the pants for a guy who, by his own admission, has had more than 16 knee surgeries (with over $100,000 in medical bills) to treat the lingering staph infection that almost took his leg and his life.
During the commission meeting, Lawal was asked by commissioner Pat Lundvall if he “speaks or writes English.” Keep in mind that this question, innocent or not, came nearly seven minutes into the commission meeting, so Lundvall was well aware that Lawal spoke English.
In all likelihood, Lundvall was simply trying to establish, for the record, that Lawal understood English. This is common practice in hearings like this one. But you also cannot fault Lawal for receiving the comments with a hint of racism.
Look, Pat Lundvall is not a racist. Is she a terrifying woman, akin to the scariest teacher you ever had during your middle school years? Yes. I’ve been to plenty of NSAC meetings, and Lundvall always managed to scare me just by showing up. She can be rude and condescending, but she’s not a racist.
So yes, I can understand why Mo lashed out the way he did.
I’m not sure why he was released from Strikeforce, however. These incidents involving Twitter never seem to have much of a center mass. Forrest Griffin made rape jokes, but a simple explanation allowed him to keep his job. Miguel Torres? Not so much.
Dana White himself regularly calls people much worse names than the one Lawal called Lundvall.
Is it because Lundvall is a public official? If that’s the case, shouldn’t the same grace extend to Steve Mazzagatti?
A lot of this can be solved with a comprehensive Twitter policy. As of right now, there are no concrete rules as to what you can and cannot say on Twitter. UFC officials urge fighters to “use common sense” during meetings at the annual Fighter Summit in Las Vegas, but it’s becoming quite apparent that “using common sense” isn’t going to be a great rule of thumb going forward.
It’s quite easy to avoid stepping over the line when you know your job is in jeopardy if you do so. It becomes immensely difficult to avoid that line when it’s a nebulous, moving object.
The UFC is a very smart company, and they are privately owned. They are allowed to hire and fire whomever they want, whenever they want and for whatever reason they want. If they believed King Mo crossed a line yesterday in directing his wrath at Lundvall, fine. That’s their prerogative.
But it’s past time to make this thing easier on the fighters. If you’re going to encourage off-center Twitter behavior with financial rewards, you need to lay down some very specific ground rules governing what they can and cannot say.
That way, when you bring down the hammer for dumb social media comments, you’ll at least have a reason.
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