A Russian street fighting organization that has raised money for Moscow’s illegal invasion of Ukraine expanded into the US earlier this year with the help of prominent American white supremacists from the extremist neo-Nazi “active club” movement and the neo-fascist organization Patriot Front, the Guardian can reveal.
The group, known as Streets Fight Club (SFC), also promoted violent, for-profit combat events featuring white nationalist extremists held in the US south to tens of thousands of followers on Instagram and YouTube.
SFC stages bareknuckle brawls throughout the year, typically in Europe. Events are often held at abandoned sites, where improvised fight cages are set up using barricade fencing.
One event the group posted about in July, for example, took place at the ruins of a coal washery near Carmaux, France.
SFC generates income by selling live and recorded pay-per-view streams of the fights.
One August 2023 stream was promoted on the Russian social media website VK as a fundraiser to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A post said proceeds would go to troops mobilized in the “special military operation”, the Kremlin’s propaganda term for the war, concluding: “Glory to Russia!”
The pay-per-view stream was advertised on Instagram, although without mentioning its fundraising purpose.
Many SFC fighters come from far-right backgrounds. Images of fighters brandishing neo-Nazi and white supremacist symbols, including sonnenrads and valknuts on apparel and in the form of tattoos, have been posted by the group on its social media for years.
That includes verified accounts on Meta-owned Instagram and Google-owned YouTube, where it has over 25,000 subscribers. Meta did not reply to multiple requests for comment.
SFC’s YouTube channel, which had more than 20,000 subscribers, was banned after the Guardian reached out to the company for comment. YouTube said it determined that SFC’s content violated its hate speech policy.
SFC also maintains a Telegram channel, prominently linked to from its Instagram page, filled with years of images featuring fighters flaunting neo-Nazi and far-right insignia.
When SFC established its US offshoot earlier this year, the extremist connections were even more prominent.
Videos and images posted to Instagram, YouTube and Telegram by SFC in April advertised a US-based event dubbed “Slaughter Smokey Mountain”. The participants were drawn from the ranks of some of the most notorious white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups in the US.
Among them was Thomas Denton, fighting under the alias “Phoenix”. Denton pleaded no contest to felony firearm and conspiracy charges in Michigan in 2022 for his role in trying to set up a “hate camp” for The Base, an accelerationist white supremacist group that advocates overthrowing the government to establish a white ethnostate.
The Base is a designated terrorist organization in Canada and the EU.
Denton also frequently appears on the website of the Asatru Folk Assembly, a nationwide group that claims to practice “native, pre-Christian spirituality” and which the watchdog Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a white supremacist hate group.
Another fighter, promoted under the alias “Dagda”, is Thomas Grady. A former marine, his online presence reveals he is a member of the Tennessee active club, which is led by the violent white nationalist and Holocaust denier Sean Kauffmann.
Grady left a negative Google review of a Tennessee-based Brazilian jujitsu gym that he claimed kicked him out for allegedly holding “neo-Nazi or white supremacist” views. The profile picture on his Google account is taken from Slaughter Smokey Mountain promotional footage.
The Guardian was also able to identify him by linking a phone number he listed on Facebook to a Telegram account called “Dagda Tuatha”. The account is active in Telegram channels associated with the Tennessee active club and in SFC’s Telegram channel where, in May 2025, it sent a message indicating it belonged to a fighter in the Slaughter Smokey Mountain tournament.
Active clubs form a loose network of decentralized white supremacist and neo-Nazi cells that pose as recreational sporting groups. Experts have warned their real purpose is the recruiting, indoctrination and training of violent far-right extremists.
“If active clubs are allowed to continue to operate and multiply, the likelihood for targeted political violence and terrorism by their members against supposed enemies of the ‘white race’ (eg, Jews, people of color, Muslims and LGTBQI+ individuals) will increase,” Alexander Ritzmann, a senior researcher at the Counter Extremism Project who studies the movement, said.
The Guardian reported last month that active clubs had been using the killing of the far-right commentator Charlie Kirk to recruit new members with the promise of vengeance and, in June, revealed how one active club infiltrated a family-friendly grappling school.
Meanwhile, Grady was not the only person with active club ties involved in SFC’s US expansion.
His opponent at the Smokey Mountain event was a man billed as “Sporty”. Recognizable by his distinctive handlebar mustache, “Sporty” is Tristan Rettke.
Images posted by the far-right propaganda outlet Media2Rise show Rettke participated in a boxing tournament held in Texas last year between members of the active club network and Patriot Front, a white nationalist hate group born out of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Southern Poverty Law Center reported in May that Patriot Front was secretly behind at least a dozen active clubs across the US.
Rettke was charged in 2016 with civil rights intimidation for disrupting a Black Lives Matter rally at East Tennessee State University. While a student there, he showed up to the event wearing a gorilla mask, carrying bananas on a rope, and holding a sack emblazoned with the Confederate flag.
The case sparked national outcry and Rettke was ultimately convicted of a lesser misdemeanor in 2019.
Andrew Lindgren, another participant who SFC billed as “Drew”, has participated in Patriot Front and active club events, images posted to Telegram show. Lindgren also appears frequently in images and videos posted to the Telegram channel of Patria Gloria, Patriot Front’s Brazilian jujitsu team.
Patria Gloria is helmed by Ian Michael Elliott, a longtime Patriot Front leader. In March, Nashville’s News Channel 5 revealed he was one of the organizers behind a 122-acre white nationalist compound in Tellico Plains, Tennessee.
Patria Gloria and Elliott, who was banned from a Tennessee grappling school last year due to his extremist affiliations, link several of the men who participated in SFC’s US launch.
Images and video posted to Telegram in November 2024 show his Brazilian jujitsu team hosted a bareknuckle boxing event at the Tellico Plains compound. Participants included Grady, Lindgren, Rettke, Patriot Front founder Thomas Rousseau, and members of the Texas-based Lone Star active club.
Elliott is also Facebook friends with another fighter who took part in SFC’s US expansion: Lucas Cheek. Billed under his first name, he posted a video of his fight with Denton on Facebook, set to the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army and featuring an SFC watermark.
Grady replied to a request for comment by saying he would only answer if a Guardian journalist sent him a video showing them “doing 100 burpees”, a type of a full-body calisthenics exercise.
None of the other men featured by SFC responded to requests for comment. Asked about its affiliation with US extremists and neo-Nazis, SFC replied via Telegram message: “Did we give you permission to interview us?”
While SFC said in Instagram posts that the “Slaughter Smokey Mountain” event took place in Texas, the landscape shown in the promotional video more strongly resembles Tennessee, where most of the fighters reside.
It is unclear if this was a geographical error by the Russian promoter or deliberate misdirection.
However, SFC began promoting a fight in July that would take place in Texas. Social media posts related to that event also reveal the leaders of SFC’s US expansion.
Featured in promos for the Dallas SFC tournament – billed as “Rise of Violence” – is a bleached blond, tattooed fighter who competes as “Panzzer”, standing alongside other competitors in front of the city’s Reunion Tower.
He is Texas resident Avery Ross Ruiz and a member of the Lone Star active club, whose members include Rousseau and Kieran Morris, another leading Patriot Front figure.
Ruiz identified himself as the man who “runs the SFC America sector” in a 17 May 2025 Telegram message seen by the Guardian. In a promotional image for SFC’s Dallas event, he is pictured alongside Graham Whitson, yet another Patriot Front activist.
In addition to the SFC Dallas event, Ruiz participated in a southern California fight tournament between Patriot Front and active club members in August.
He replied to a request for comment with three yawning face emojis.
The full Dallas fight was offered as a $25 pay-per-view stream beginning in August on Millions, a sports streaming and e-commerce startup.
Millions did not reply to a request for comment, though the stream was deleted after the company was contacted by the Guardian.
Grady, the Tennessee active club member who fought in the “Smokey Mountain” event, also took part in the Dallas event. In a message to SFC’s Telegram channel, he wrote that footage of the “Smokey Mountain” event was never released because it “just didn’t fit the vibe”.
Ritzmann, the Counter Extremism Project researcher, said “it is curious that active club US fighters are getting involved with a pro-Russian invasion group” as active clubs are “supposed to stay neutral in this war to avoid infighting” as white supremacists in the US have variously aligned themselves with far-right groups pledged to both sides of the conflict.
Sean Craig, Tristan Lee, and Youri van der Weide contributed reporting