Neo-Nazi fight clubs dupe Tri-Cities event center into hosting ‘Martyrs Day Rumble’

It started with some distasteful song lyrics from the band.

Then, some kids with shaved heads walked in.

It wasn’t immediately obvious at first glance that Jeff Carvo had been lied to. But the more the night drew on at the HAPO Center in Pasco, the more unsettling the details and iconography became.

Then, someone put up a banner that read, “No guilt.” He told the group to take it down and that they needed to wrap up the event.

“The more and more uncomfortable we got, we just thought we had to shut this down and call it a day,” he told the Tri-City Herald.

The group wasn’t completely who they said they were. He didn’t have the full story.

That’s how a group of three dozen white supremacists fooled HAPO Center event managers into hosting a fight night Dec. 3 in commemoration of a notable Pacific Northwest white nationalist.

The event at the center — owned jointly by Franklin County and the city of Pasco — detailed first by online news blog The Daily Kos, underscores the vulnerable position gyms and local governments can find themselves in when groups deceive them.

‘Active clubs’

Last month’s event in Pasco was organized by neo-Nazi groups Evergreen Active Club and SoCal Active Club.

“Active clubs,” according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), embrace white supremacist ideology and consider themselves “vigilante soldiers standing guard against a perceived existential threat to their ‘white future.’” Groups are loosely associated in several U.S. states.

They also often indoctrinate members into neo-Nazi ideology through fitness, memes and other propaganda. These athletic groups first started gathering on encrypted chat threads, like Telegram, but have recently been hosting real-world meetups, according to the ADL.

A flier distributed on the Evergreen Active Club’s Telegram channel promised the Tri-Cities, Wash., event would bring “bands, fights, foods, booze and tattoos.”

The “Martyrs Day Rumble” poster also featured a photo of infamous white nationalist Robert Jay Mathews, and touted “Defeat Never” and “Victory Forever.”

Antisemitic and racist memes, workout videos, neo-Nazi insignia and the use of the Nazi salute are littered about on the channel, too.

One of the lead organizers who spoke with HAPO officials was Daniel Rowe, a Richland man convicted of stabbing an interracial couple outside an Olympia bar in 2016.

Rowe, who was sentenced to more than four years in prison, has ties to the Hakenkreuz Skinheads, according to ADL.

The group appeared to use a trend among neo-Nazi “active groups” to dupe venues into allowing their events.

A private gym in San Diego was the most recent victim, Carvo said. The event billed itself as the “first of its kind for the nationalist scene in the U.S.,” according to The Daily Kos.

Taxpayer-owned facility

The 84,000-square-foot HAPO Center off Road 68 in Pasco is among the largest events and sporting facilities in Eastern Washington. Formerly known as the TRAC center, HAPO Community Credit Union entered into a 10-year naming rights agreement with the county in 2019.

It’s a taxpayer-owned events center, with Franklin County under majority ownership and the city of Pasco under minor ownership. It regularly plays host to crafts and trade shows, RV shows and a number of other local events, such as cancer center fundraisers.

Shirley Simmons — co-owner of Simmons Venue Management, which recently took over managing facility events through a contract with Franklin County after several managers resigned — called it an “isolated incident” and said it would not happen again.

“This is not something I’ve ever thought about. We would never do business or promote or condone this sort of behavior,” she said, adding later, “I think it’s a disgrace that these kind of people even exist on this earth. It’s just nothing I stand for, nor anyone I put myself around.”

She said they plan to conduct more thorough online background checks in the future.

“The city of Pasco has no management authority over the HAPO Center,” Pasco Mayor Blanche Barajas said in a statement to the Herald. “The city of Pasco categorically condemns the hateful message and purpose of the event at HAPO on Dec. 3 and further condemns the subterfuge used to get this event booked. Hate has no home in Pasco.”

Similarly, Franklin County Administrator Duane Davidson also said he condemns the actions and group. At the same time, Davidson said the HAPO Center managers handled the problem in the best possible manner.

‘We got lied to’

Carvo, the owner of Tri-Cities startup Clubhouse Sports Academy, has a contract with the HAPO Center to sublease the indoor arena area for sports competitions and training. In exchange he receives the rental fees.

It’s a job he’s passionate about, especially bringing sports to youth programs.

In the lead-up to the event, Carvo said Rowe reached out to him about the possibility of hosting four to six mixed martial arts-type events on the weekends. These would be private events, Carvo recalls Rowe telling him, with only about 40 people.

Carvo said they billed themselves as a group of boxing promoters who were looking for a facility. He didn’t think much of it, so he accepted and was paid $500 in cash to use the arena for four hours.

“It seemed normal,” Carvo said. “And then, some time into it, it just had that weird, eerie feeling that something was off.”

The event, for the most part, went off in expected fashion.

But as Carvo started to see the propaganda, he worked quickly to shut it down.

“It was not until it was on its way that people knew what was going on. Everybody was pretty taken aback by it,” Simmons told the Herald.

Carvo said he’s ready to move on from his mistake. The father of four said he would rather focus on building athletic facilities and places for kids to express themselves.

Unless you play prep sports, most of the private sporting facilities are “inadequate” for Tri-City kids, said Carvo.

“There’s no place that these kids can come and play and be involved in sports, because I want kids to be off their cellphones, off their screens, and to come in here and play,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that we got lied to and it put my name, my company and my reputation in jeopardy.”

Carvo said he wasn’t fully aware of who he was dealing with until after the FBI reached out to him a few days later. They reportedly asked him questions about the group and asked for camera footage.

He plans to donate the $500 rental fee to a charitable cause. And his company plans to focus on youth programs only from now on.

‘Martyrs Day Rumble’

A video posted to the group’s Telegram channel around Dec. 19 appears to show the stage and inside of the center, with a large “HAPO Center” sign posted in the background. A caption reads: “Here’s a video of our last event getting set up in Eastern WA.”

The event had “great turnout,” one poster later wrote, with people flying in from Tennessee, New York and Southern California.

The Dec. 3 event — deemed the “Martyrs Day Rumble” — was in dedication to Robert Jay Mathews, the founder of The Order, a neo-Nazi group that planned to violently overthrow the U.S. government and its “Jewish cabal.”

He died after a 35-hour armed standoff with federal agents in December 1984 at his hideout in Whidbey Island. The group is tied to a string of robberies, racketeering and at least two assassinations, one of which was Denver talk show host Alan Berg.