Strikeforce has added a pair of bouts to their Columbus card currently scheduled for March 3rd, and one of them is likely to serve as the co-main event. AKA's Mike Kyle is set to face off with former Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Gegard Mousasi, and Conor Heun will meet Ryan Couture. Kyle tweeted about his bout today:

Kyle is coming off a decision win over Marcos Rogerio de Lima last September, while Mousasi is 4-0-1 in his last five outings. With King Mo out for a while due to his positive steroid test, it's possible that this bout could decide the new LHW champion. It's more likely that the winner will face someone else for the title down the road though.

Heun picked up a grueling win in his last outing, managing to defeat Magno Almeida by decision despite dislocating his elbow. Couture is 3-1, with all of his prior bouts coming on Strikeforce Challengers cards. The matchup is expected to take place on the preliminary portion of the card.

More SBN coverage of Strikeforce: Tate vs. Rousey

"King Mo" Muhammed Lawal popped positive for drostanolone after his fight against Lorenz Larkin at Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine, a fact that has baffled the former Strikeforce champ. He and manager Mike Kogan have held firm that Mo is clean.

Talking to Sherdog earlier this week, the fighter maintained his innocence and now appears to be using the "supplement defense":

"My track record speaks [for itself]," implored Lawal. "I've been through college and NCAA drug testing, you see what I mean, I'm a clean athlete. I've been tested through USADA [United States Anti-Doping Agency] and WADA [World Anti-Doping Agency] for international competition and I've always been clean ... This is my first positive test for anything, I don't even know what to say. All I know is that the truth will come to light and I know that I'm a clean athlete, I know that I can guarantee that I am a clean athlete."

,,,

"I've never used any performance enhancer in my life," declared Lawal, who along with manager Mike Kogan seem to be targeting a sizeable stash of supplements and anti-inflammatory injections for a troublesome knee injury leading up to the fight as the potential cause for the positive test.

"Right now we're just looking over everything and trying to come to a conclusion [on how this happened] because it's ridiculous, man," said a frustrated Lawal. "I'm in shock. All I can do is keep on looking at my supplements. I don't even know what to do. I just keep looking over my supplements to see what we can find."

I like Mo, but it's worth repeating the standard line where the athlete is responsible for everything he puts in his body. If you're not 100% certain about a supplement, don't take it.

SBN coverage of Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine

When "King Mo" Muhammed Lawal tested positive for steroids after his fight against Lorenz Larkin at Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine it seemed to come out of nowhere for everyone involved. While Lawal is planning to appeal the test, his manager, Mike Kogan, has reiterated that they don't understand the positive test but does recall a non-anabolic injection.

Via USA Today:

"Both of us are very surprised by these results," Kogan told USA TODAY. "Neither of us has ever heard of this drug. ... We honestly have no clue where this came from."

Other than food and drink, the only substances that Lawal takes on a regular basis are iron supplements, Kogan said. When Lawal had fluid drained from his knee a few weeks before the bout, he did receive an injection of a non-anabolic steroid, Kogan said.

Despite the appeal it would be unexpected for the "B" sample to provide a different result than the positive received on the "A" sample.

SBN coverage of Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine

The drug tests for Strikeforce: Rockhold vs Jardine are back and a surprising name tested positive for PEDs: Muhammed Lawal. Of the 15 fighters tested, only Lawal's came back positive. The steroid of choice? Drostanolone, an expensive 'designer' anabolic steroid which has unique qualities. Drostanolone is part of the dihydrotestosterone (DHT) family and has various medical uses, mainly for lowering cholesterol and in chemotherapy. One of the most unique qualities is that it allows an athlete to add strength without adding mass, which makes it a perfect steroid for athletes in sports that require weight cutting.

Lawal faced Lorenz Larkin in a fight that many considered to be a jump off for another shot at the Strikeforce light heavyweight title. He stopped the fight in the second round by TKO. The fight was already surrounded by controversy as referee Kim Winslow was late to stop Lawal's assault on Larkin, causing the fighter from Riverside, California to take a lot of unnecessary damage.

Lawal has denied that he has taken any steroids and it is expected that he'll challenge the drug test in an appeal. He has previously passed tests from both the USADA and WADA when wrestling internationally.

Full list of fighters tested after the jump...

SBN coverage of Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine

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While it often seems like Showtime and Strikeforce (or at least Scott Coker) are banking on Gina Carano to return to the cage and resume her fighting career, we've certainly not had any indication from her that it would happen anytime soon. Gina's major motion picture debut is coming soon with the release of Haywire on January 20 and the early reviews indicate a bright future on the screen for the former champion.

Sergio Non of USA Today sat down with Gina to talk about the film but also asked about her future in the sport:

You've been hesitant in talking about your future in MMA, one way or another. What criteria would you use to make a decision about returning or not?

(chuckles) There are certain things that I always dreamed of, like fighting in the UFC. That was a big one.

I don't know. There's just certain things that I feel like haven't been accomplished there. There's such great women coming up in the sport; seems like a wonderful time to be in women's MMA.

So I'm not sure. I'm going to kind of get on the other side of Jan. 20th and give back to this film what it gave to me. Because it was -- I won't lie and say it wasn't the best time of my life, because it absolutely was. It was really fun to creatively express myself in a sport and a passion that I love, without having to try and hurt someone.

I know that there's so much that you can do in a lifetime with acting and there's only a certain amount of time you can fight. I'm keeping all these things in mind. I'll definitely know a lot more in a couple of months.

Is that a way of saying that you'd be done with fighting if the movie does well and high-quality offerings come rolling in from Hollywood?

Not necessarily. I think that the right offer has to come in either way. I was told that by a wonderful actress whom I've always kind of looked up to and watched in her career, the good and the bad.

She told me something and I'll always remember it. She says, "No matter what, you've got make the right decisions for yourself in this life. You have to stay true to yourself."

Sometimes that means walking away from something that you don't want to walk away from because you think the opportunity's going to be so great. Or sometimes that's doing something that nobody believes in, like when I started Muay Thai and I got hard time for fighting and looked at sideways for thinking that that was a profession.

I think it's just going to feel right when it does. I'm not sure exactly what is going to take that decision. I'm just trying to get on the other side of Jan. 20th and look back and know I gave it everything I had to give back. Then I can have a clean slate and start and land where I'm at.

To me it sounds like a return isn't happening any time soon, but doesn't quite want to permanently close the door.

SI.com's Loretta Hunt reported Monday night that Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos has begun the process of appealing her one year suspension from the California State Athletic Commission with CSAC Executive Officer George Dodd "likely" expecting an April 9th date to hear the appeal.

The then-Strikeforce 145-pound women's champion was suspended on January 6th after her December 17th annihilation of Hiroko Yamanaka when a pre-fight urine sample tested positive for the synthetic anabolic steroid Stanozolol. Santos would have been eligible to apply for her license to be reinstated on December 17, 2012.

Santos claimed that she had taken a supplement to assist with her weight cutting for the Yamanaka fight that turned out to be tainted. Soon after the suspension, Zuffa co-owner Dana White announced that Santos would be stripped of her title and that the future of the division within Strikeforce was in doubt.

The 26-year-old had returned to action for the first time in 18 months against Yamanaka, a 16-second destruction that was ruled a no-contest following the suspension. She had compiled a 10-1 record to that point, winning the 145-pound gold in August 2009 with a first round TKO over Gina Carano with successive wins over Marloes Coenen and Jan Finney.

Note: Hunt updated her story Tuesday afternoon with April 9 as the likely hearing date.

Last weekend's Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine card was their first of 2012 and many people have been curious about what the "new" Strikeforce will look like, inside and outside the cage. Well, the action in the hexagon (or lack thereof) spoke for itself, and now there's some information about the card for fans to digest. Ratings for the card on Showtime, fighter salaries, and medical suspensions, coming up!

Let's start with ratings. The show averaged 344,000 viewers, which is down from the 460,000 average for last month's Strikeforce: Melendez vs. Masvidal. The numbers aren't even close to the average for last year's eight larger events, which averaged 522,000 viewers. It should also be noted that the card aired on a free preview weekend for Showtime, which meant that more than three times the usual number of subscribers had access to the card. While everything's way down, that was to be expected (at least to a degree), and it remains to be seen what the new Strikeforce will level out at in terms of viewers.

We'll get to salaries and medical suspensions after the jump, since they're kind of bulky and take up a lot of space. Let's roll!

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Bas Rutten has a simple advice for Cristiane Santos or 'Cyborg', who has now been suspended and stripped of her title following a failed drug test. Cyborg has since released a statement and blamed a 'dietary supplement' for testing positive for a banned substance, stanozolol.

If it's true, Bas says there's an easy and simple solution to clearing her name: