A professional MMA event in Orlando last Saturday ended with the winning fighter throwing what appeared to be Nazi salutes from the ring, calling his Jewish opponent 'a short little fucking Jew prick' over the arena's loudspeaker, and a spectator getting ejected for waving a giant swastika flag. The city of Orlando's official response was, essentially: don't look at us. First Amendment, what can you do.
Let's Establish Who We're Dealing With Here
The Duel Arena kickboxing event at Orlando's 18,500-seat Kia Center featured a headline bout between Paul Miller and Ben Azoulay. Miller, who fights under the nickname 'the gypsy crusader,' is, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a far-right extremist and white supremacist. He served 41 months in federal prison for illegal possession of firearms by a convicted felon. The US attorney's office for the southern district of Florida noted in 2021 that he had called for a race-based civil war. This is a man whose entire public identity is built on open bigotry, and he was headlining an event at a publicly operated arena in one of America's largest tourist cities.
His opponent, Azoulay, is no hero of this story either. He is a 'manosphere' influencer with over half a million Instagram followers who was convicted in 2011 for the rape of a minor. His social media output has included instructing women to 'keep a man's belly full and his balls empty' to retain a partner. In February, as the Guardian reports, a Beverly Hills school district had to formally apologize after allowing him to speak to a Jewish student club, with the superintendent calling his views 'abhorrent.' So yes: this was the fight card. These were the two men Orlando hosted.
What Actually Happened Inside the Arena
Miller won the fight. Then things escalated. According to the Guardian, he took the microphone over the arena's loudspeaker system and called Azoulay 'a short little fucking Jew prick.' He then appeared to give at least two Nazi salutes from the ring. Somewhere in the crowd, a person had smuggled in a large swastika flag and was waving it before being ejected. Multiple brawls broke out among spectators.
This happened inside a publicly operated venue in downtown Orlando. Not at some fringe event in a warehouse. Not on a livestream from someone's basement. At the Kia Center, an arena that seats 18,500 people and is operated by Orlando Venues, a division of the city government. The swastika flag situation is particularly worth sitting with: the Kia Center has, per the Guardian, strict admittance policies. The city has not explained how someone walked in with a flag that size and nobody caught it until it was already being waved.
The City's Response Was a Masterclass in Looking the Other Way
Orlando Venues waited until Tuesday to post a statement to the Kia Center's X account. The core of that statement: the city, as operator of a public venue, is bound by the First Amendment and cannot deny access based on political ideology or perspective. 'Irrespective of the message,' the statement read. They noted that the views expressed 'do not reflect the views of Orlando Venues, the City or Orlando, or our staff,' and promised to continue reviewing event policies 'while respecting the Constitution.'
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer issued his own statement declaring that 'hate will never be welcome here,' which is a genuinely remarkable thing to say about a city that just hosted exactly this. The city did not answer the Guardian's further questions, including the fairly basic one of how a person got a giant swastika flag past security. Kia America, the naming rights sponsor, also issued a statement distancing itself from the incident and praising venue staff for their 'prompt action,' which, again, happened after the flag was already inside and being waved.
The People Who Actually Said Something Useful
Anna Eskamani, a Democratic state representative running for Orlando mayor, called the event and the city's posture unacceptable. She told the Guardian that the incident was 'a reminder of how prevalent extremism is in our society,' and pushed back on the city's hands-tied framing. 'Conduct that invites and incites violence is a different question,' she said, 'and every angle should be explored to prevent this from happening again.' That is a more honest accounting of the situation than anything the city itself produced.
Republican US Senator Rick Scott, Florida's former governor, also weighed in, posting on X that Saturday's events were 'extremely disturbing' and that 'antisemitism has no place in Florida.' Credit where it's due: he said something. Though it is worth noting that Rick Scott has spent years cozying up to a political movement that has mainstreamed exactly the kind of rhetoric on display Saturday night, so the concern is appreciated and the self-reflection is not evident.
The Dingo Take
A convicted felon and self-described white supremacist gave Nazi salutes in a publicly run arena while calling a Jewish man a slur over the loudspeaker, and the city's formal response was a First Amendment lecture. That is the sentence. Read it again if you need to.
The First Amendment argument is not entirely wrong on its legal merits, and nobody serious is suggesting the government can jail someone for a speech they gave at a sporting event. But 'we cannot stop this' and 'we take no responsibility for creating the conditions where this happens' are two very different things, and Orlando is doing the second while hiding behind the first. How did a giant swastika flag get into a venue with strict admittance policies? Who approved this event? What exactly are those policies being reviewed in light of? The city isn't saying, and nobody in power seems particularly pressed to find out.
The broader picture here is not complicated. A man with a documented history of calling for race war, currently active on social media, headlined a professional fight at a major American arena, won, and then used that arena's own sound system to perform antisemitic abuse and what looked very much like Nazi salutes in front of a crowd that included at least one person who brought a swastika flag to the show. And the city said it was compelled. Florida's Republican leadership, which has spent years raging about drag brunches and AP African American history courses as existential threats to children, apparently finds white supremacist fight nights a trickier line to hold. Funny how that works.
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