Tom Lawlor Goes Off On USADA’s Recent Issues
UFC veteran Tom Lawlor was shockingly released by the promotion last week. Now it’s time Lawlor goes off on USADA.
The news was a shock due to the fact that Lawlor had served one year and 10 months of a USADA suspension. Lawlor’s release left him in an uncertain position in terms of his career.
Be that as it may, “Filthy” isn’t necessarily taking the news that hard. He recently told Luke Thomas on this week’s “The MMA Hour” that he’s looking forward to new opportunities:
“You mentioned me having some difficult news lately, but I’m not choosing to look at it that way, I’m choosing to look at it as opening the door to many other opportunities that hopefully come my way. I was with the UFC for a long time, and as you mentioned, I had some difficult news, I was let go one week ago today. [It was] some pretty interesting, shocking news to me at least.”
Lawlor then opened up on the reasons he was released, speculating it was due to his age:
“I think it was a combination of [the UFC] getting rid of guys and my age and having not fought in years. It’s unfortunate that the UFC has become such a large company that they don’t look at things on an individual basis, but that’s part of the game I guess, and part of the entertainment business. I just kind of have to take it and roll with it as it goes.”
USADA Woes
“Filthy” then opened up on his USADA failure, noting that he had been tested many times since and passed each time:
“I was kind of shocked as I had asked previously for my release when I was given my USADA suspension, and believe me when I tell you that I did not intend to ingest any sort of ostarine or any performance-enhancing drug. I’m all-natural and I’ve been tested many times since then and passed all of them.”
Lawlor said he was glad to be out of the USADA testing pool due to its recent track record of being highly unfair:
“I am, however, happy to be out of the USADA testing pool. I don’t have to let them know where I am at all times and wonder about that. Those of you who [are aware of] Josh Barnett’s situation or kept abreast of that can kind of understand that not everything is fair when it comes to USADA and the UFC.”
USADA was supposed to clean up the UFC, and in theory, it has. But Lawlor said their banned substance list is managed lazily, resulting in fighters being suspended:
“Idealistically, it is [a good thing]. However, in execution, I think a lot of things are slipping through the cracks and I think they have done a lot of things wrong.
“The banned substance list is basically just a list of substances that they don’t want to test, that they don’t want to see in USADA sanctioning. Basically, anything gets put on that list. We get e-mails from USADA, there have been alerts, there has been a ton of information out there about ostarine being spiked in products. If it’s that prevalent, maybe you should do some studies on it instead of suspending people and ruining their lives for two years over it.”
