For most of the last decade, robot fighting meant wheeled machines with spinning weapons.
The idea of two standing robots fighting was far-fetched from real life, but REK is trying something closer to the movie Real Steel: full-size humanoid robots in a ring, piloted live by people, in front of a crowd.
REK (Robot Entertainment Kombat) is a San Francisco outfit founded by Cix Liv. It stages events where human pilots control humanoid robots in real time. The robots don’t decide the fight. A person ringside is.
A pilot wears a VR headset (often a Meta Quest) and uses controllers so their movements map onto the robot. Early experiments also used an Apple Vision Pro. A gamepad is the other option. Software handles low-level balance and stability; the pilot supplies intent, timing, and shot selection.
REK has described the goal as embodiment: the pilot is meant to feel like they are inhabiting the machine, not driving it from outside.
The robots themselves have mostly been commercial humanoids pressed into combat duty, including Unitree models and, later, EngineAI’s T800, a roughly six-foot machine. These platforms were not built as fighters. Balance, falls, and recovery remain hard problems. At REK2 in San Francisco in August 2026, winner Hiroyuki Osone qualified from home in Japan via the simulator, had his robot fall, got it back up with a get-up sequence he had practised in the sim, and went on to win.
Bouts are short. Public descriptions of the format point to rounds on the clock, points for clean hits, and a best-of structure rather than a scripted finish. REK’s own framing is closer to a combat sport than pro wrestling: outcomes are not predetermined.
There is also a free simulator. It uses physics rather than pre-recorded animation, and the same balance-control style as the real robots. Winning in the sim has already been a path into a live event.
Events so far have been small but real: San Francisco cards (including REK1 at Kezar Pavilion in February 2026 and REK2 in August), plus stops in places such as Tokyo and Vancouver. Crowds are in the room. Replays exist. The production is still startup-scale compared with UFC or even BattleBots. Recently, they had partnered with Kick, giving more people the ability to watch the event live.
On September 18th, 2026, REK put internet personality Frankie LaPenna in the cage against an EngineAI T800 in San Francisco and promoted it as a first human-versus-humanoid fight. A person still piloted the robot. Footage showed LaPenna getting dropped by kicks; accounts of the finish diverged, with REK saying LaPenna won after unbalancing the machine.
California’s State Athletic Commission responded with a cease-and-desist dated September 23, which Liv posted in early October. The notice treated the bout as an unsanctioned human-involved combat contest and told the promotion to stop holding, promoting, or advertising boxing or MMA contests involving a human in California without commission approval.
It did not announce a general ban on robot-versus-robot fighting. The legal line is the human in the cage, not the machines hitting each other.
The open questions are what will decide whether this stays a demo or becomes a league: durable enough hardware, clear rules, a sanctioning path when humans are involved, and whether audiences care more about the pilot or the machine. For now, the interesting part is narrower. Someone in a headset throws the punches, the robot takes them, and the result isn’t written in advance.
What would it take for you to get into the ring with a fighting Robot?
