King Mo Nearly Loses Leg To Staph Infection

[No More Sorrow]

Muhammad ‘King Mo’ Lawal nearly had to have his leg amputated this month.

The former Strikeforce light-heavyweight champion underwent surgery on an ACL tear following his fight with Lorenz Larkin on January 7th. But he contracted a staph infection shortly after the operation and it was a particularly virulent strain.

News of the infection and its life-threatening consequences comes from Nashville-based MMA journalist Robert Joyner.

“On the King Mo situation, hearing from those close to him he's in a bad situation. He got injured in the Larkin fight, had to get another ACL. There were complications and he ended up with a very bad staph infection that was life threatening, and nearly required amputation,†he posted on his Twitter account at the weekend.

“Mo had to have 5 surgeries in 12 days before staph was gone. Currently he's taking an iv directly into his heart every day for six weeks. Making the situation even worse, this was a recurrence of same injury within 18 months, so Zuffa/SF insurance won't cover the ACL surgery or the subsequent follow-ups for the staph. Mo is/will have to come out of pocket on medical bills that may well reach into six figures.â€

Clarification on the insurance situation was provided by Josh Gross of ESPN. He explained that Lawal’s surgery was not covered because he carried the injury into the January bout and the terms of the Zuffa fighter insurance do not cover repeat surgeries for the same injuries inside an 18-month period.

He added that Lawal is now in the clear health-wise and will be taking antibiotics for the next six weeks as he recovers. Finally, further detail came via the account of rogue reporter FrontRowBrian, who said he had spoken to Lawal.

Lawal apparently wished to make clear he was in good health and in no financial peril. However it was also revealed that he still has a ‘peripherally inserted central catheter’ - a direct line, in other words - to his heart. A PICC is a form of intravenous access that can be used for a prolonged period of time and is preferable to other methods - such as repeat injection - which have a higher rate of infection.

Fightline.com

 

[Deezy]

It's up to the people who run gyms like these to keep their fucking mats clean.

Wipe up the damn blood and sweat after every sparring session, it's not rocket science.

 

[The Cork]

Jesus.

Hope he gets well soon.

Can't help but think this is an exaggerated press release to take the heat off his drug test fail though.

 

[No More Sorrow]

Jesus.

Hope he gets well soon.

Can't help but think this is an exaggerated press release to take the heat off his drug test fail though.

That's what i thought also, i also can't see Zuffa not helping out in some kind of way with the medical bills.

 

[Slim]

Well it is stipulated that they will help with insurance for an injury but they won't for the same injury requiring surgery within 18 months. Cause if they allowed that then they would wind up broke cause a lotta fighters would be going for surgery cause surely a lot of them need it but with that clause in it... it definitely helps protect them from having to spend too much on stuff.

But it does sound like Lawal is aight though which is good.

 

[No More Sorrow]

Yeah i know about all that, but still he's one of Strike force's top fighter's. And yeah, from what I've read on other site's he'll recover just fine from this. He's still going to be suspended for the steroids thing, i can't remember if he was already or if it just hasn't been officially announced yet either way he'll have plenty of time to recover and get back to training whenever does fight again.

 

[Slim]

Hopefully he'll have a real challenge in his next fight.

 

[No More Sorrow]

Here's an interview with Mo done after the staph infection news broke, it's a pretty good read actually.

The Secret

“My health is good, but here’s the thing: All this stuff that came out [on Twitter], happened like three weeks ago. I had an ACL replacement again, but that wasn’t a big deal. I think what got me was the micro-fracture surgery. The micro-fractures got infected with staph, and I ended up in the hospital for about 12 days. I didn’t want people to know I was in the hospital, so if people texted me, I didn’t tell them. I was in pain and damned near dying. They gave me morphine. It was crazy. I was trying to keep it normal, and get back to the people that were texting me, telling them that I was ok, so that it wouldn’t get out that I was in the hospital.”

Discovery

“I was in the hospital for 12 days and I had five procedures to remove the staph infection from my knee. I didn’t even know there was anything wrong until I came back from Brazil, and my knee was swollen. I couldn’t flex my leg or bend it. That’s when I started doing this rehab stuff after taking the S-Mass Lean Gainer, because that was like my rehab supplement. It’s supposed to be like NO-explode. So I was taking that for a week, and I was like ‘Man, it’s not working.’ My knee was still swollen, and I couldn’t flex my leg. I went to the [orthopedic surgeon] and got my knee drained and got the ‘rooster cartilage’ [orthovisc] injected in. I went for an MRI and [the doctor] told me that my cartilage looked very unstable and that I had torn my ACL. The funny thing is, he said I could have torn it a long time ago, because when he drained my knee, there was no blood there. He told me my ACL was torn and I was gonna need a new one. After the fight, I had the surgery. A week passed, I was doing rehab a little ahead of schedule, and all the sudden my leg started feeling hot and I had these two golf ball-sized welts on my knee.”

Five Procedures and a PICC Line

“It was the day of the Evans/Davis fight. I called the doctor and told him my leg was hot and I had these golf ball lumps on my knee, so he says ‘Come to the office and we’ll check it out.’ He drained my knee, and the blood was like Ghostbusters ectoplasm. It was thick and gooey. He took the blood to the lab, and I went home to watch the fights. Right after Sonnen-Bisping, I got a phone call. ‘Mo, meet me at the hospital now.’ He said ‘We have to take you under right now to clean out the infection in your knee.’ So they took me to surgery and cleaned it out. I wake up, and I have a PICC line in my arm that’s attached to my heart. I didn’t think it was that bad and that I was gonna leave Sunday. The doctor said he was keeping me until Monday. Monday comes, and my temperature shot up to 103 or 104, and my knee was still swollen. They took me back into surgery and cleaned it out again. He did the same procedures every other day, depending on how it looked and how my temperature was.”

Reaction

“I felt like, because I’m a fighter, I should be tough. I’ve been through a lot, but when I look back, this is the worst I’ve ever been through. I wouldn’t wish this on nobody. This infection definitely was worse than the one on my face or the one on my elbow. My doctor said that he wanted to take cultures of my skin because I carry more staph than the average person. He said that people that engage in combat sports tend to carry more staph on their skin. It just remains dormant. The bad thing is, once you get a staph infection, it stays in your blood and remains dormant until it finds a weak spot and it jumps in there. It’s an opportunistic infection. It was scary but I didn’t want to tell nobody, because I wasn’t trying to get sympathy. I didn’t want people worrying about me.”

Financial Status

“ZUFFA has no responsibility on this, but it’s all taken care of. The hundreds of thousands of dollars that I’m supposedly in debt are all bogus. People assume that I didn’t have a plan when it comes to injuries, and that I’d be in debt. All that is bogus. I’m not in debt. The UFC, their insurance is good, especially if you get hurt during training camp, but this injury occurred before the 18 month period was up. They had no responsibility to handle this. It was all on me, but it’s already taken care of. I’m not under any financial hardship. I can still pay rent, still go eat at McDonald’s, still go buy Pepsi, still chill and relax, watch ‘The Walking Dead.’ I got cable still. The moment I get rid of my cable is when I’m in trouble, and I’m not ever getting rid of cable.”

When asked what shows he’s currently watching , Mo listed The Walking Dead, Eastbound & Down, and American Dad as the three he’s currently consumed with. He indicates that he plans on making his return to Twitter sometime this week, so all of you who have been missing his music video tweets and fight chat, have something to look forward to.