Check out: “Mo Lawal Won’t Appeal Positive Test for Steroids, but Will File an ‘Answer’” - MMAFighting.com

Former Strikeforce light heavyweight champ “King” Mo Lawal likely won’t appeal a positive steroid test following his win over Lorenz Larkin at a Strikeforce event in Las Vegas earlier this month, the fighter and his manager, Mike Kogan, told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. Neither will they admit that Lawal knowingly or willfully ingested the steroid Drostanolone, however.

Instead of pleading innocent or guilty to the charges, it appears the Lawal camp will plead ignorance, blaming an over-the-counter supplement.

“Since we’re not contesting the findings of the commission test, we’re not challenging the chain of custody, we’re not pointing fingers at anybody and we’re not calling for conspiracy theories, I don’t believe we’ll actually file an appeal per se,” Kogan told Helwani. “What we will file is an answer, and an answer would involve affirming their test results and providing our findings and our explanation.”

The guilty party, according to Kogan and Lawal, is a supplement called S-Mass Lean Gainer by Rock Solid, which Lawal said he bought at a Max Muscle store in California and used only sporadically for “rehab stuff,” the fighter explained. It was recommended to him by a Max Muscle employee some time in April of 2010, he said, though it’s since been removed from the market, according to Kogan, who admitted he had no knowledge that Lawal was taking any supplements at all prior to his positive drug screening.

“To the best of my research, this product was taken off the shelves some time in mid-2011, for exactly the same reason that we’re facing right now. Its primary and only relevant ingredient of that particular product is a substance known as Methyldrostanolone, which is basically just a pill format of Drostanolone,” Kogan said.

Lawal insisted he’d “never even heard of [Drostanolone],” and was first alerted that he’d tested positive for it when reporters began calling him with the news handed down by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Lawal insisted he’d never knowingly taken any illegal performance-enhancing substances at any point in his athletic career, and touted his long history of clean tests in collegiate and international wrestling competitions.

“For me, the best way to get an advantage over your opponent is through hard work, preparation, and your skills,” Lawal said. “That’s the best way to get an advantage over anybody. Game-planning. That’s the best way to beat your opponent.”

At the same time, Lawal admitted that he didn’t research the supplement before taking it, even though he was well aware of instances where over-the-counter workout aids had resulted in positive drug tests for other athletes.

“When I went to Max Muscle, I figured you can’t buy steroids at a Max Muscle. It’s a chain store,” he said. “That’s like going to a grocery store and buying something illegal there. …I guess that’s the mistake I made. When I looked at the bottle, it just had a bunch of numbers on it. It had the ingredients. I didn’t see anything that looked illegal on the bottle, to be honest with you.”

And yet, as athletic commissions love to remind fighters