Tom Lawlor On His MMA Return Being Delayed by Pandemic, Appearing On PFL’s Prep Point

MLW and PFL star Tom Lawlor recently discussed his plans to return to fighting being delayed by the pandemic and more in a new interview with MMA Weekly. You can check out the highilghts below:

On what made 2020 the time for him to return to MMA: “To be honest it wasn’t the idea of “if.” My plan after my last fight was to come back and starting fighting, but unfortunately I broke my hand, and it was an injury that took months to heal. There was no surgery to be done, so it just took a long time. After that the offers I got were good, but wasn’t really what I was looking for. I was doing professional wrestling, and I do pretty well with that. The injury risk for what I was being offered to fight wasn’t always worth it. With the PFL it’s an opportunity that you can’t pass up. It is one of the premier fight organizations in the entire world. I’m towards the end of my career and I don’t want to waste my time with projects that are subpar, that won’t pay off in the long run. Clearly the juice is worth the squeeze with the PFL.”

On the pandemic causing him to delay his return to fighting: “It’s kind of a whirlwind because of everything that happened almost immediately after I signed. I signed right before the Covid-19 pandemic kind of took hold of the nation and the world. I went from a week or two of being overly excited of fighting within a few months, and having that taken away. It’s been a roller coaster of emotions for myself, as it has a lot of people. Just for myself, personally, it’s another year which I have to prepare for a fight. Often preparing for a fight is one of the toughest things; it’s not the actual fight itself. Going from being excited to fight again, then realizing that you’re not going to do it for another year, but you can’t take time off, you’ve got to keep motivated, so it’s a battle.”

On how he’ll be different when he finally gets to fight again: “One thing I’ve tried to be smarter (about) is the recovery process. In the past I’ve beat myself up too much and ran myself into the ground. Now I’m not saying I don’t train excessively, but I’m doing a better job with the recovery process and relaxing and stuff like that. My goal is when I’m in the fight is for that day to be my best day of the year, day of the month, whatever it is.”

On his appearance on PFL’s digital series Prep Point: “The PFL has a ton of interesting stories, a ton of interesting characters, and if you look at the past few months’ profile pieces, they’ve brought some of those stories to life without having to focus so much about the in-cage action. They’ve been able to keep the fighters in the forefront and get some content on them. It’s awesome what the PFL is doing. For me, myself, one of my goals with doing professional wrestling and MMA, I think of them as one business, whether it’s in the ring or the cage. One of the things I try to do is keep my name out there. I’ve done a pretty good job of doing that so far.”

On his goals in PFL: “Really, when it comes down to it at the end of the day, I’m in this to make as much money as I can. With the PFL that means becoming the champion. If there’s other things that come from that, great, but fighting’s my job, and my goal is to win this tournament next year.”