Almost four years on from his doping suspension, “Filthy” Tom Lawlor is finally set to return to a major MMA organisation when he debuts in the Professional Fighters League in April. After making his UFC debut in 2008, the 37-year-old American (10-6, one no contest) – a fan favourite for his wacky walkouts and weigh-in costumes – had been making a name for himself in the promotion’s light heavyweight division, going on a two-fight win streak before a unanimous decision defeat by the ranked Corey Anderson (14-5) in March 2016. His world came crashing down in October that year, after testing positive for a “low” level of prohibited substance ostarine in an out-of-competition test. Lawlor denied intentionally taking the performance-enhancing substance and put it down to a tainted supplement, but was handed a two-year suspension by Usada, the UFC’s anti-doping partner, and was eventually cut from the UFC roster just before his ban was about to end. Usada would eventually relax its rules for such cases, reducing suspensions to three or six months in similar cases since, and even admitting Lawlor would have got a lesser sanction had his case happened in 2019, and not 2016. “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,” Lawlor told SCMP MMA . “That’s cool, 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 [expletive] public opinion that people had of your back. UFC: Georges St-Pierre walks back from Khabib legacy bout “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 [expletive], 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.” Lawlor returned to the cage with a unanimous decision defeat by American Deron Winn (7-2) – who now plies his trade-in the UFC – on the card for the Golden Boy MMA promoted trilogy fight between Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz in November 2018. But since his suspension he has mostly been pursuing his other passion, as a professional wrestler in American organisation Major League Wrestling. His PFL debut was then put back a year after the promotion cancelled its third season because of Covid-19. For Lawlor, the anger and disappointment still lingers. “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,” he said. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tom Lawlor (@filthytomlawlor) “I have no clue where this [expletive] 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 [expletive] 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 tonnes 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, [MMA media personality] 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 realise 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.”