I see, as for the language I recognize it as a familiar "bawdy and comic" style I've read in other publications in the UK. Cloudflare really seems to have done you dirty here, as you say you didn't name him in the article, which would seem to make a claim of defamation pretty hard to prove.

If you can't get Cloudflare to stand behind you, or a lawyer willing to take your case, a last-ditch attempt might be to reach out to the person who made the claim you published; if they have evidence then you'd be in a much stronger position, since truth is an absolute defense against defamation in the UK.

I wish you luck, I think you're being treated very unfairly here.