The Continuing Saga of One Online MMA Community and an Angry Martial Artist Pestering Rick Chandler

A little less than a month ago, you may remember the story about MMA fighter Lloyd Irvin and how he disarmed an intruder at his family's home using a fancy sambo technique. In the initial post that Rick wrote, he was skeptical about the report, which resulted in a few testy email exchanges with Mr. Irvin and the editor of the site who originally ran the item, BloodyElbow.com. The next day, Rick did a follow-up with Mr. Irvin via phone interview, where the MMA fighter described the incident in detail only to go an follow-up with another email to BloodyElbow.com, still upset about the way the story was handled.

Today, Mr. Irvin went back to the Elbow to offer up the just released 911 tapes of the ordeal, but with one caveat:

I'm going to let you hear the actual 911 call that my wife made the night of our home invasion. When my wife first heard the call, she immediately started crying again, when I first heard the call it made my heart drop since I didn't experience that part of that horrific night, I was in full combat mode and never even knew that she called the police until late into the ordeal.

In exchange for letting you listen to this 911 call I have only one small request. Please write the editor AJ Daulerio at ajd@deadspin.com and please request that they remove the blog post from their site.

After you listen to the 911 call, if you could for one moment, imagine that if that was your family going though that, you'll quickly become upset as I am about Rick Chandler's actions.

Rick, if you listen to this call as a good reporter that has done to me what you've done, try to imagine this being your wife calling 911, you'll quickly understand where my anger comes from.

If you guys want to let Rick know how irresponsible he was you can write him at rick@deadspin.com.

Right. So, remember, Rick did a follow-up on this story. Talked to Lloyd, got his side of things, admitted he was a little too snarky in the initial post given the seriousness of the situation. Yay. Everybody hug.

Not surprisingly, as Mr. Irvin requested, some of the active Bloody Elbow community did respond with email protests. Here are a couple of the most passionate:

Ricks article on Irvin should be removed. I feel that Rick should be fired, hung, lynched, executed by lynchmob, fireing squad.. you name it.. it your responsibility to keep the slanderous off your site.. his article was 100% factual and slanderous.. you guys should be ashamed of yourselves.. I will never be back on your site.. ever ever ever

and

Way to do some research before you start mouthing off. Moron. I hope Lloyd Irvin finds you on the street somewhere

And, finally:

its all right here, for all of us former fans of YOUR writing, you screwed the pooch so to speak, you did us the dishonor of flaming, non reporting, and fudging a massive story without doing any type of reporting.

well here it is pal, all in black in white in irvins own words, then the police tapes, all you've done is add insult to a massive injury.

mr irvin in this article then goes into saying even with the massive blunder that is your article and your journalistic abilities, he doesnt wish this on you OR YOUR CHILDREN which he notes he found out after that you do have children , however your article is nothing more than you making a laughing matter out of something that could of been a massacre.

good job pal. good job.

take the article down, from your most recent writings its fairly safe to assume you dont have what it takes to apologize formally, publicly or privately to Mr Irvin, so maybe by removing the article you can save whatever shred of credibility you have as a writer, by on all accounts i dont believe you are nothing more than an avid blogger.

ill continue forwarding this message to you and as many other staff at deadspin until its gone. dont bother blocking the email address it will be different everytime =)

however the accounts are active and id love to see what type of response id get from you, although im fairly certain im not the only emailing you i am fairly certain you dont have what it takes to man up and email any of us back, nor publicly make this right, so just take the article down, save whatever bit of dignitity you have. you got what it takes Rick Chandler?

For the record, Rick will not be fired, he's not guilty of libel, and he will not be hung or shot or killed (by me, at least). But it should be noted (again) that our initial report on this was skeptical based on the facts that were available and then was quickly rectified. Also, in case there is still any skepticism about what Lloyd Irvin and his family went through last night, you can listen to the horrifying 911 call right here.

We wish Mr. Irvin and his family the best in getting through this traumatic time and also in his future business endeavors. The post has not been removed, but has been updated with these links. Hopefully, that makes Mr. Irvin happy and prevents Rick from being pummeled to death by angry Bloody Elbow readers on his way to the grocery store. As you were.

Audio of Lloyd Irvin's Chilling 911 Call [Bloody Elbow]

Send an email to A.J. Daulerio, the author of this post, at ajd@deadspin.com.

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