Strikeforce Light Heavyweight Champion Muhammed "King Mo" Lawal Cordially Invites You to Go **** Yourself

Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal has a lot to be happy for nowadays. He’s been in the professional MMA game for less than two years, and he’s already got a pretty big championship to call his own. To get the belt he beat former Strikeforce Light Heavyweight Champion Gegard Mousasi, who was known to his fans as both “the future of Mixed Martial Arts” and “the next Fedor Emelianenko”. Mo he beat him pretty convincingly, too: he took “The Dreamcatcher” to the mat at will and controlled him with some big ground and pound. Mo is set to make the first defense of his Strikeforce Light Heavyweight Championship on August 21, when he takes on Rafael Cavalcante. Even with such a brief career as a professional Mixed Martial Artist, “King Mo” is already beginning to rub some fans the wrong way with his brash, cocky attitude. In a recent interview, he came right out and said “Some [fans] are cool, some are idiots. They’re fans- they don’t know what the **** they are talking about. That’s why I’ll say it again: **** the fans. A lot of them ain’t educated. They’re just bandwagon jumpers.” While I’m not one to shy away from some good trash-talking, King Mo has gone a little too far.

First off, Mo is biting the hand (hands, more like it) that feed him. Fans are the people that show up to watch you perform; they pay for tickets and buy your merchandise. The entire Mixed Martial Arts industry, and for that matter, just about all entertainment/sports industries known to man, live and die on fan interest and attendance. It’s not like King Mo has hurt anybody’s feelings, we’re all big boys here, but if a professional athlete tells me that he couldn’t care less about my support, I’m going to rethink supporting him. If he shuns us, the least we could do would be to shun him right back, whether it be through not buying his merchandise or not paying to see a card that he is headlining. I realize that Mo may draw a lot of unnecessary criticism due to his cocky attitude and his status as a relative newcomer. But by telling everybody to go screw themselves, Mo is ostracizing the loyalists as well as the doubters.

And you know what? It’s a shame that this latest tirade seems so half-hearted, coming from a guy whose mouth can run a mile a minute on any given day. King Mo has given us some great trash-talking antics in the few fights he has had, but it seems like he’s just phoning this one in. The whole “uneducated fan” thing has been done to death. The “hardcore fan vs. casual fan” debate has been both killed and revived so many times that it’s almost like Dracula in all the Castlevania games:  it just won’t die. I enjoy some good trash-talk, I even called Chael Sonnen “The Man I Love to Hate”, but Mo hasn’t said anything I haven’t heard before. So not only is he alienating a large portion of his fanbase, he’s not even all that entertaining while doing it.

To be honest, I’m still a fan of “King Mo”. I’m just going to roll my eyes, shrug my shoulders, sigh, and chalk this all up to a failed attempt at being controversial. At the end of the day, it’s very possible that King Mo could become one of Strikeforce’s major players, and a very dominant Light Heavyweight Champion. All the right ingredients are there: he’s got phenomenal wrestling, very impressive cardio, and good stand-up. And if he can keep the trash-talked centered in squarely on his opponent and not the fans, he could be one of Strikeforce’s most entertaining fighters ever.

But what do you think, fans and friends? Do you think King Mo spoke out of line, or do you think he’s just “playing the game” in order to increase interest in his upcoming fight? And speaking of that fight, do you have Mo or Rafael “Feijão” Cavalcante winning?