NJPW STRONG Openweight champion “Filthy” Tom Lawlor recently appeared on Wrestling Inc. Daily to discuss his free agent status following his decision to not re-sign with MLW. Highlights from the interview are below.
Says he expects to know more about his future by the end of the week:
“Yeah, I’m currently not under contract with any professional wrestling organization for anything other than single dates. Now, how long that will remain the case? I don’t know. Hopefully not very long, to be fair, but I have been contacted for some pretty interesting independent shows. I have to check on the dates of those. We’ll see what happens in the future, but I’m expecting something by the end of this week, if not sooner.”
Why he decided to not re-sign with MLW:
“I guess that’s one of the issues is I’ve been there for years. I’ve been there for four years. There comes a time, I guess, when you either move on, or you continue down the path that you’re going, and with so much uncertainty over the past year, the past two years, fortunately, unfortunately, I find myself in a financial position where I don’t need to really be under contract with anybody if I don’t want to. MLW and I talked. They gave me a great deal. I’m not going to complain about the offer that was out there, but at the end of the day, I think it was time to kind of move away from there. Hopefully, I will be back in the future. Hopefully, there’ll be a scenario in which I can step into the MLW ring again, but I don’t know when that’ll be.”
Clarifies his free agency status:
“Yeah, I mean, I hope so. I went out there. I’d like to think I tried as hard as I could to do my job. I think it was a mutually beneficial relationship, in most ways, for both of us. During the pandemic, I was doing content for them, left to right, almost every week, trying to keep not only myself but them out in the news. They helped me out a few times with getting extra bookings, that sort of thing put me in contact with other promotions. Like I said, I have no qualms about spending my time there for the past four years, and like I said, I’m not opposed to going back there in the future, but for right now, I’m a free agent.”