USADA Official Says Tom Lawlor May Have Gotten Shorter Suspension With A Present Day Ruling

Former UFC fighter Tom Lawlor was issued a two year suspension by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) for failing a drug test, with the competitor testing positive for Ostarine.

Earlier this week, a four pack of UFC fighters in Nicco Montano, Marvin Vettori, Sean O’Malley and Augusto Mendes were issued six month suspensions for ingesting a contaminated substance.

Lawlor and those four fighters both ingested Ostarine, but Lawlor’s suspension was four times longer than the others.

USADA Communications Director Adam Woullard, in a statement to MMA Fighting, says that Lawlor may have gotten a shorter sentence presently than what the fighter got in 2017:

“An effective and just anti-doping program should always evolve to best protect clean athletes and to evaluate the facts and science for each individual athlete and fairly sanction intentional dopers. Today, laboratory testing is more sensitive and able to detect far smaller quantities and new metabolites of PEDs than even just a few years ago, which is great for detecting intentional cheats because of longer detection windows, but on the flip side may also mean some inadvertent positives such as through product contamination are found. While the facts in Lawlor are similar but not necessarily identical to the ostarine cases announced this week, he received the standard sanction at the time for his violation announced in 2017. If his case arose today, he might have been eligible for a lower sanction and would have the ability to challenge to an independent arbitrator to determine the final consequence.”

The former UFC fighter returned to action last year at Golden Boy MMA: Liddell vs. Ortiz III, suffering a decision loss to Deron Winn.