California officials pull plug on human-versus-robot cage matches

Fun’s over.

California officials are calling foul on a company hosting man vs. robot cage fights in the state. Robot Entertainment Kombat hosted what it called the “world’s first human-robot fight” in San Francisco last month, shocking the internet.

A video of the fight shows the man, influencer Frankie LaPenna, clad in headgear, gloves, and kneepads facing off against a 6-foot-tall robot.

The clip shows LaPenna and the robot exchanging blows, with the robot dramatically kicking the YouTuber to the ground several times. The fight racked up over 8 million views on YouTube, disturbing some.

“Welp, this is how it all begins,” one commenter joked.

“Some people will come back to this video after 20 or 30 years and will say “we could have stopped all this if we wanted to,” another user said.

“Fighting someone who can’t feel pain is genuinely terrifying,” a third user commented.

But state officials aren’t happy. Robot Entertainment received a cease and desist from the California State Athletic Commission following the fight, who ordered the company to stop the fights, or face a misdemeanor.

“We made it boys. California sent us a Cease and Desist for “UNSANCTIONED HUMAN VERSUS HUMANOID ROBOT CAGE FIGHT,” the company’s CEO Cix Liv said in an X post that included the letter.

But the letter wasn’t sent because people were facing off against robots, but rather because the company did not have the proper approval. According to the California business code, “no [full contact martial arts] event shall take place without the prior approval of the commission.”

Robot Entertainment Kombat has a fight scheduled in San Francisco for October 9, but this time, it’s robot vs. robot, no humans involved.

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