Lars Sullivan woke up on September 16 and decided to take a flamethrower to wrestling journalist David Bixenspan.
The former WWE star posted a photo of Bixenspan and hit him with an ableist insult, giving absolutely zero explanation for why he suddenly decided to put him on blast. Sullivan didn’t bother with a setup, accusation or even an argument. He simply named Bixenspan and went straight for the personal shot.
“David bixenspan is developmentally retarded.”
Bixenspan isn’t some random guy Sullivan found scrolling through wrestling Twitter. He’s a longtime wrestling journalist whose work has appeared in outlets including SB Nation, Bleacher Report, Deadspin and Motherboard, and he has also worked as a researcher on Dark Side of the Ring.
There’s also some history here, and it goes back to one of the ugliest chapters of Sullivan’s WWE run. In 2019, Bixenspan pressed WWE for answers after the company fined Sullivan $100,000 over offensive comments from his past and ordered him to undergo sensitivity training.
Bixenspan specifically asked WWE whether Sullivan was being punished for the old posts themselves or for failing to disclose them before signing with the company. WWE responded that the punishment covered “the broad issue covering all of the above,” putting Bixenspan right in the middle of the story while Sullivan was getting hammered publicly.
That doesn’t automatically mean Sullivan is still pissed about something that happened seven years ago. He didn’t explain why he targeted Bixenspan on September 16, but that old WWE fine is one very obvious connection between the two.
Bixenspan has also remained a lightning rod in wrestling circles. He recently found himself dragged into another mess when Road Dogg accused him of using screenshots of conservative social-media posts to hurt his chances of landing work with AEW, although a source inside AEW later pushed back on the idea that Road Dogg’s political views cost him the job.
Sullivan, meanwhile, has been firing off plenty of controversial posts of his own lately. Ringside News has already covered him taking shots at Nyla Rose, going after Bronson Reed and making other inflammatory remarks online, so Bixenspan is now the latest person to catch one.
Maybe that 2019 WWE fine is still stuck in Sullivan’s craw, or maybe there’s something else going on behind the scenes. Until Sullivan explains himself, all we really know is that he decided to make Bixenspan his latest target and didn’t exactly ease into it.
What do you make of Lars Sullivan suddenly going after David Bixenspan, and do you think their history from Sullivan’s WWE fine has anything to do with it? Let us know your thoughts and feedback in the comments.
