Popular Wrestling Website Disables Interactive Forum Following WWE Performance Center Shooting
As news of a disturbing shooting outside of the WWE Performance Center spread throughout the day on Monday, spates of conjecture, dark humor, and insensitivity also developed in particular corners of the internet. One well known wrestling site, Diva Dirt, acted quickly to stem a tide of inappropriate comments by temporarily disabling a popular feature on its pages. Diva Dirt, which specializes in reporting news and rumors from the world of women’s wrestling, temporarily disabled its comments section site-wide. The move was announced and explained via a statement by the site’s owner, Jason Deadrich.
“Today we posted news about a shooting at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando. Very quickly there were over 1,500 comments on the post that ranged from jokes to death threats to some even speculating that some would “kill” for their favorite Diva. This was a very serious issue and it was disappointing to see our readers making light of a potentially life-threatening situation.
“Reading through comments on other posts, it has become clear to me that the rules against abuse, spam and off-topic discussions are not being followed and the site editors and moderators are continuously being disrespected.
“Due to the childish behavior and abuse, I am disabling comments from this site until further notice.”
Deadrich closed his open letter to Diva Dirt readers by praising his site’s administrative team and expressing optimism that the website can eventually reopen its social features. He also posted his statement via Twitter.
A Message From the Owner http://t.co/9vMkGDNssI pic.twitter.com/n6gVHmFvfT
— Diva Dirt (@divadirt) September 1, 2015
In the interim, the site returned to business as usual, posting articles regarding Total Divas, WWE NXT, and TNA Wrestling’s Dollhouse faction.
Although WrestlingINC identifies itself as “the largest independently owned wrestling website in the world,” Diva Dirt enjoys a respectable following online, including an active community of readers. The site’s Twitter account currently has over 106,000 followers.
SB Nation identified the suspect in the WWE Performance Center Shooting as 29-year-old Armando Montalvo. It is speculated that Montalvo was fixated on former Divas Lita and AJ Lee. Triple H commented briefly about the incident via Twitter and deferred further questions to authorities. Area witnesses noted that Montalvo has a history of engaging in disruptive behavior around the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida. WWE reportedly obtained a restraining order against the troubled fan, but he had not been served with it at the time of the incident.
[Image via Shutterstock]
