Sixty-three years ago, The Twilight Zone imagined a future in which humanoid robots replace human boxers.
Desperate for money, an aging boxer named Steel Kelly, played by Lee Marvin, defies the law and enters the ring disguised as a robot. It doesn’t end well.
Now that the technology has caught up, it turns out people are actually willing to go toe-to-toe with humanlike machines, and millions are eager to watch it, often rooting for the robot. California already wants to put a stop to it, but is it too late?
And 35 years ago, Terminator 2: Judgement Day made audiences empathize with a killer robot as it sacrifices itself to save humanity. One of today’s leaders in the humanoid race has recreated the scene to retire its legacy fleet with much fanfare. It’s stirred mixed emotions.
Is the Terminator universe really becoming reality before our eyes?
REK’s Human vs Robot Match
In San Francisco, REK gained international attention when it pitted an influencer against a real-life Terminator. Now the viral stunt has the startup in the crosshairs of California state authorities.
REK, short for Robot Entertainment Kombat, has been hosting cage matches featuring teleoperated humanoid robots since last year. It holds the fights at its Nob Hill location, where it sells, rents, repairs, and customizes humanoids from Chinese companies like Unitree Robotics, Booster Robotics, and Agibot.
Its founder, Cix Liv, says says REK has the only pair of T800 humanoid robots from the Shenzhen company EngineAI in the United States. REK got its hands on the adult-scale robots just in time. The Chinese-made humanoids entered the country just before a July 2026 federal crackdown effectively shut the door on new imports of foreign-built humanoids without previous authorization.
The T800, which is named after the iconic synthetic human from The Terminator series, is known for its fighting capabilities. EngineAI is ramping up production of the robots as it showcases their increasingly autonomous maneuvers for URKL (Ultimate Robot Knockout League). Sixteen teams are competing with standardized T800 hardware, so the real challenge is customizing their artificial intelligence, control systems, and fighting strategies.
The robots are also used by Shanghai-based Hero eSports for its new Cyber Hero humanoid combat league, which just held its first tournament in Riyadh in an event billed as the Middle East’s first humanoid robot fight card. Yet another league, ARC, is about to launch in Singapore.
REK held its first T800 match in August, which lasted just a few minutes and was much tamer than EngineAI’s bouts. The startup gained even more attention when it modded one of its T800s to resemble the movie Terminator on its worst behavior. But its profile reached new heights when it hosted what was billed as the world’s first match between a human and a full-sized humanoid robot.
Frank LaPenna, a 29-year-old social media start known for outrageous stunts, entered the octagon wearing spiked boxing gloves, head protection, and torso padding. According to Cix Liv, he wanted to do it without protective gear, but REK wouldn’t allow it. The influencer initially rushed the robot and landed several punches, but the humanoid sent him flying across the floor with a swift kick.
The robot was not autonomously deciding to attack its opponent. A human operator piloted it remotely while the robot’s onboard systems handled balance and posture. REK is developing a system that combines VR control with humanoid hardware, essentially allowing a person to fight through a robotic avatar. Yeah, like in Real Steel (2011).
Though widely circulated clips led many to believe the T800 won, extended footage shows that LaPenna ultimately defeated the machine. He also fought a full-sized Unitree H2 humanoid dressed like the Predator. Unlike the T800, that robot is authorized for sale in the US, priced starting around $40,000, because it won prior approval from the FCC.
California’s War Against Human vs Robot Matches
Five days after REK’s viral stunt, the California State Athletic Commission sent the company a cease-and-desist letter, ordering it to stop holding, promoting, advertising, or sponsoring unsanctioned fights between robots and people. The order, shared by Cix Liv on social media, does not apply to REK’s humanoid vs humanoid exhibits. Signed by the commission’s executive director, Andy Foster, the notice explicitly warns that REK and anyone else involved in future cage matches could face misdemeanor criminal charges.
We made it boys. California sent us a Cease and Desist for "UNSANCTIONED HUMAN VERSUS HUMANOID ROBOT CAGE FIGHT" https://t.co/cw2jjl1aNV
— CIX 🦾 (@cixliv) September 30, 2026
The athletic commission argues that it has jurisdiction because a human participant was taking part in the spectacle. But REK counters that the existing rules were written for fights between two or more people, not a human versus a machine. The statute the letter cites, Business and Professions Code § 18625, defines activities it has authority over as including “boxing, kickboxing, and martial arts exhibitions, between two or more persons, where full contact is used or intended that may result or is intended to result in physical harm to the opponent.”
Complicating REK’s argument is the fact that the T800 was piloted by another human. The robot was effectively acting as a remote-controlled physical proxy. Courts tend to side with government agencies in general so it’s probably an uphill battle for REK in California.
The commission isn’t outright banning human vs robot fighting. Its position is that REK must go through its approval process and satisfy regulators that the human in the ring is adequately protected. California’s existing combat sports system places heavy emphasis on athlete safety, medical screening, ringside oversight, and the commission’s ability to stop a bout. Each event would require commission-assigned inspectors present to supervise.
Convincing state regulators that the fights could ever be safe enough for them might be a losing battle.
EngineAI showcased how strong its flagship humanoid robot is in December 2025 with viral footage of the T800 kicking its founder, Zhao Tongyang, in the chest. Without his protective gear, the blow likely would have broken several ribs and caused potentially life-threatening injuries to internal organs.
EngineAI lists the T800 as being 173 cm (5 feet 8 inches) and weighing 75 kg (165 lbs). However, REK says the version it has is closer to 183 cm (6 feet) and 91 kg (200 lbs).
With up to 400 Nm of peak joint torque, the T800 can generate mechanical force beyond what most adult men in their prime could do with comparable movements. Its electric actuators can deliver powerful, repetitive bursts of force without pain or hesitation, which makes a poorly controlled strike potentially unforgiving.
The robot could also pose a danger with the way it’s able to get back up very quickly, even when its block is knocked off. Without a head, it loses much of its vision, but its arms still move, its legs still work, and its balance system stays online. The instant it detects a fall, the robot’s control system launches a pretrained recovery motion to get back into a fighting stance within seconds.
Netizens are divided about the idea of pitting people against machines for spectacle.
Supporters say it’s a genuinely new form of entertainment and a real stress test for humanoid hardware. They say humans choose to participate as they do in other extreme sports where the danger is accepted.
Some in the robotics industry worry about its impact beyond the ring. As manufacturers try to normalize robots as everyday helpers, and not Terminators, viral cage matches push the public in the opposite direction by associating them with violence rather than usefulness.
But there are also plenty of people in the industry who do not consider the association with Terminators inherently negative. After all, the titular robot in the movie franchise does far more good than bad in service of humanity.
Figure AI’s Divisive T2 Tribute
Brett Adcock, the founder of the $39 billion Silicon Valley startup Figure AI, is among those who are inspired by The Terminator. The 40-year-old serial entrepreneur managed to convince Arnold Schwarzenegger to appear in the company’s most epic marketing video yet as Figure retired its second-generation humanoids.
The idea started when Adcock asked social media followers for sendoff suggestions, saying Figure needed to terminate its legacy fleet to make room for newer robots and to prevent anyone from reverse engineering the hardware. Arnold replied with an obvious reference to the ending of Terminator 2: “You should melt them.” Figure then shipped an unspecified number of robots to Finland after struggling to find a closer foundry that would allow a battery-powered robot into a furnace.
According to Figure, engineers trained the robots in simulation to jump into the molten steel autonomously. This part differs from the movie because Arnold’s Terminator cannot self-terminate.
A few of the robots remain at Figure’s San Jose headquarters while the melted metal was cast into $500 commemorative pieces. The sales probably won’t come close to covering the cost of getting Arnold to say: “Hasta la vista, Figure 02.”
The marketing video was surprisingly divisive.
Many admired the attention to detail and the technical chops required to pull it off. Mashable called the footage “absolutely wild” and praised the autonomous jumps. Some joked that it could backfire if there ever is a robot uprising like in 2009’s Terminator: Salvation.
Others found it genuinely disturbing and cruel to train humanlike machines to leap to their own demise. While a minority believes that AI is developing its own form of self-awareness, research has repeatedly shown that humans are naturally inclined to emphasize with machines that resemble living beings. The dynamic is what made the ending of T2 so impactful.
“I feel very distressed by the F.02 decommission process,” Brendah Njuru, the founder of San Francisco-based HOMY Robotics, said on X. “As a robot creator, I view us as parents to our robots, and I view them as having their own personhood… Training them to jump to their own demise means this now lives on in their neural net, which is constantly evolving. I wonder how they will look back on this. I understand the Terminator reference, but I don’t find it funny.”
Beyond the symbolism, others criticized the video for being a waste of investor money and said the hardware could have been put to better use. Adcock insisted that disassembling the robots would have tied up engineers who are busy working on the Figure 04 and would have risked custom actuators ending up on a teardown bench.
Adcock insisted that disassembling the robots would have tied up engineers who are busy working on the figure four and would have risked custom actuators ending up on a teardown bench.
Marwa ElDiwiny, a robotics YouTuber and founder of Sunflower Robotics, questioned the logic in a 22-minute video response. She also raised concerns about recycling and safety, noting that Figure itself said it couldn’t find anyone in the US or Mexico that would participate due to Figure 02’s lithium-ion batteries. She said she worries that hype and spectacle are being rewarded with massive funding rounds while smaller firms building practical products struggle.
“There’s a limit for everything, and not everyone in robotics can get away with whatever they want to do,” she said.
Whether the stunt will translate into actual revenue remains to be seen. For the company founder, a self-processed sci-fi fanatic, recreating one of the genre’s most iconic robot scenes with a living legend was probably just too much to pass up.