Tom Lawlor Reveals UFC Got Mad At Him For Managing reDRagon In ROH

MLW's Tom Lawlor was interviewed by Fightful, where he discussed trying to approach pro wrestling differently from an in-ring standpoint.

“If you watch a lot of my matches after, it’s simple stuff like if I hit a move and the opponent kicks out, a lot of times I’ll immediately go to a hold. I’ll transition into a hold. I very rarely make covers without cradling or grabbing an arm like I’m going to move to the next thing. Because that’s what I would do in a realistic situation. One of the things I realized pretty early on when I started back on the scene in wrestling was that there’s all these guys that can do high flying, all these guys that can do creative spots on the mat, big head drops, and stuff like that. But I can’t do that stuff. I can’t go out there and do a backflip. I wish I could. But I can’t. So I have to do stuff that’s different and one of the things that’s different, if you watch guys make covers, you want somebody to believe you’re trying to win this contest, you’ve got to actually act like you’re trying to win. You’ve got to put your weight on them. You gotta cradle them. You’ve got to try to pin them. Do you have any idea how hard it is to try to pin someone for three seconds? It’s very hard. You’d be flopping around like a fish even if they’re on dream street. That’s one of the things I think I do that’s better than what most people do because it’s more realistic. So if I could pinpoint one thing, that would be probably it.”

Lawlor also revealed that UFC got mad at him when he got a slot as a manager in Ring of Honor.

“I had a managing gig for reDRagon in Ring of Honor that Court Bauer set up. My man, Bauer set up way back when. That was 2013 or 2014, something like that. They had a match against the Young Bucks, two out of three falls. I managed them to victory. It was an awesome match and then I was set, they were gonna have me manage reDRagon semi-full time. I believe it was gonna be like pay-per-views and big shows. The UFC yelled at me for it. I was told not to do it. You know, at the end of the day, I just gotta be honest with myself. I’m not a big enough draw, I didn’t make enough money. If I did, things would have been different. They would have stuck behind me. They would have sucked my d*** like they do some of the other guys. That’s not what happened.”