In 2016, Tom Lawlor, an eight-year UFC vet and huge favorite of The UnderGround, had an anti-doping test flagged by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the UFC’s independent drug-testing agency. Lawlor has credibly maintained his innocence, but received a full two-year suspension for the test for Ostarine. USADA now typically suspends fighters for three or six months for Ostarine.
Lawlor requested to be released from his contract with the UFC, but was denied. Then shortly before his suspension ended, he was in fact released. During his suspension and since, Lawlor has been professional wrestling, but fought at Golden Boy Promotions: Liddell vs. Ortiz 3 on 2018. He will return to MMA for the PFL’s 2021 season in April.
In an interview with Nick Atkin for SCMP’s Post Fight podcast, Lawlor tore into USADA.
In one sense I’m happy every time I see one of these guys like Sean O’Malley or Diego Sanchez even get hit with one of these, and it’s a three or six month suspension. That’s cool, said Lawlor. But at the same time, it sucks when you’re the guy who’s the poster child for being screwed in this situation.
There’s no pay-off for me in the long run. USADA screwing me isn’t gonna help me, they’re not gonna come back and say, ‘Hey, we’re sorry, here’s the fight purses you missed out on, here’s the s****y public opinion that people had of you.
None of that’s gonna happen, so it’s really a kind of situation where I can’t look back on it and find the silver lining in the cloud. It sucks – I think they’re bulls***, I think the people running it are scumbags. I think it’s a failed operation already. The way Jeff Novitsky and the people who are liaisons between it handle it is a joke, and I would be glad to let anybody know that.
So that’s my thoughts on it, screw them.
“I can tell you straight up I had some of my best friends look me dead in the eye like I’m some liar, like I’m making some story up. I have no clue where this s*** came from. There’s USADA scientists claiming now that up until a year ago they couldn’t even detect this stuff at certain levels, but they told me four years ago exactly the level I had and how low it was, so what the f*** is going on here, sorry.
It’s disrespectful to me, but not only me – it’s disrespectful to a lot of people in the sport. There’s tons of people, Josh Barnett had years of his career stolen and in the end he won his case against USADA, they had nothing. But he loses out on years of money, people look at him as a cheater.
It sucks because, Luke Thomas was on Joe Rogan a couple of months ago, so I get a message from everybody for three weeks saying, ‘Hey, Luke Thomas is going to bat for you’. I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s great, I’m glad people realize the truth now’.
But it doesn’t help me at all. It’s like reliving a bad dream over and over every time somebody gets caught and either let off or gets busted. I don’t like it either way.
