Oh man I love LightWave, you got BOTH LW and Maya? Life is just so unfair. What about remove the rigging and just do it in Maya? Would just take you a couple of minutes extra and it could solve the export problem. I am a old user of LW 6, 6.5, the new ones I have no idea, I stopped using it after 7 was released as I did not like the new GUI at all. Added: according to your picture your model is around 30 000 polys, thats just silly, you should fix that.