Tag: Muhammed Lawal

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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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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