Following a first round loss to Peter Wright at the Hungarian Darts Trophy yesterday evening, Joe Cullen took to X to fire back at ‘trolling attempts’ online.
Joe Cullen featured in his 100th European Tour event yesterday but was on the losing side of a closely contested match against Peter Wright.
Wright would win 6-5 while firing in back-to-back 12-darters to progress to the next round.
While the loss to Wright wouldn’t have been the result he wanted on a landmark occasion for him, this was actually overshadowed by his online posting following the loss.
At around 9:30pm, Cullen would take to X (formerly Twitter) to respond to online hate/trolling attempts with the key target being a fellow professional darts player… 👀
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Joe Cullen FUMES on X
David Schlichting is a professional darts player from Germany who you might have seen playing on the MODUS Super Series.
His post on X was the catalyst for what would become a direct retaliation from Cullen.
David posted:
“Pretty impressive for a guy who loathes having to leave Lancashire”
On his account @rockstar_13_, Cullen was clearly not happy by the trolling attempts of someone that is not only a darts fan but also a player!
Cullen’s first post stated:
“David , what is your problem with me? If you actually played top level darts you’d know exactly what I was referring to? But you don’t! You sit at home ‘praying’ I lose wishing u was in my shoes
Maybe aim higher than the modus tour and someday I’ll see you on tour! Doubt it tho!”
He continued with a follow up post a few minutes later stating:
“And I’m from Yorkshire not Lancashire you absolute whopper! You won’t be playing modus series again that’s for sure! 🛎️”
By this point the darts community would get involved with a divided opinion.
Half the commenters defended Cullen saying David was bitter, a hater and that Joe is from Yorkshire, not Lancashire.
The other half actually said this was unprofessional to have an outburst like this following a loss (obviously a period when emotions are running high).
Following the backlash, David would respond with another message:
“Joe I’m just making fun, I‘ve never prayed you lose in my life. In fact I’ve cheered you on in multiple matches you’ve lost before. You don’t need to take my shitposting this seriously.”
To which Cullen was not interest in hearing and fired back with another response:
“Bullshit David. I’ve seen many tweets bad mouthing me , constant in fact! You don’t actually know me nor are you relevant at all. You’re just some guy trying to attract attention within darts when you’re actually massively irrelevant! Ive bit my tongue long enough reading your 💩”
David had one final response:
“The attention attraction seems to be working quite well, if only now I could be as good at Darts as you. I’ve also never claimed to be relevant or that I knew you.”
From the exchanges and change in tone, it seems Schlichting tried to downplay his initial message in light of Cullen’s response and the community backlash but Cullen was not done just yet.
He left one final message to another ‘troll’ before fans started to say Cullen had lost his head and needed to step away from the platform to calm down…
It’s actually 3 losses , but you missed out my Hungarian open winners trophy (conveniently) https://t.co/kMxkFZwBnu
— J O E C U L L E N (@rockstar_13_) September 20, 2024
It’s the next morning and neither player has had further comment on this but it’s an interesting one to follow with Cullen stating that David “won’t be playing Modus Series again”…