Myron Gaines Says He and Brother Ryad Acted in Self-Defense in Austin Street Brawl
A sidewalk shouting match during Gaines’s Kick stream in downtown Austin on Oct. 9 turned physical. Gaines says they were attacked; no arrest, charge or injury has been reported.
Myron Gaines, co-host of the Fresh and Fit podcast, says he and his younger brother Ryad Fudl defended themselves when a confrontation on a downtown Austin sidewalk turned physical during his Kick livestream on Friday night, Oct. 9.
Viewer clips show Gaines, Fudl and their crew in a heated argument with two people that escalates into shoving and a scuffle, with at least one person taken to the ground and others pulling people apart, NerdBaller News reported. One clip passed 1.8 million views on X. The two people involved have not been identified and have not spoken publicly.
Less than half an hour after the first clip spread, Gaines responded on X. “We tried to avoid this confrontation,” he wrote, saying they “had to defend ourselves.” The next morning he said the man holding one person in a headlock was his video guy, that he grabbed the second person to stop him from stepping in and then let him go, and that the other two “walked up and started the fight.”
On a follow-up stream titled “Brothers Of Destruction Aftermath!”, Gaines said one of the two went after his cameraman first, that his group spent a couple of minutes trying to calm things down, and that he asked someone to get the police. He noted that Texas is a stand-your-ground state. “I don’t want to be fighting. And now I’m going to be viral for fighting,” he said.
As of Saturday morning, no arrest, charge or injury had been reported, and the Austin Police Department had not made a public statement. The clips do not show how the confrontation began.
It was Gaines’s second viral moment in Austin that week. On Oct. 7, a debate he held at the University of Texas at Austin, titled “The Cornell 7 Are Innocent! Prove Me Wrong!” and hosted by Uncensored America, was shut down by Austin police and the university. Earlier on Oct. 9, a fan account posted that Gaines, Fudl and a crew member had been swatted while streaming; Gaines thanked the officers for recognizing it as a swatting.
Gaines is a former Homeland Security Investigations special agent, according to his Kick profile. Fudl, 11 years younger, runs the YouTube channel Ryad’s Report.
