If you’re still wading into the culture war about whether trans athletes should be allowed to compete, you’re living in the past. You gotta keep up; we’re onto humans fighting robots now.

Meet Robot Entertainment Kombat, an upstart sports startup that pits human vs. machine… as long as the California State Athletic Commission doesn’t find out. Founded by Cix Liv, the company has apparently been hosting mixed martial arts-style fights between robots—you know, because the least interesting part of sports is the human element and the best part is the violence.

What happened here is the robot hit a motor limit in its head. By software design this will “e stop” the robot.

This is just a design choice, the head on these robots is entirely cosmetic and does nothing yet (not even vision).

According to Lix’s LinkedIn, he’s been hosting “humanoid” fights, which pit two bots remotely controlled by real people against each other, since September of last year. But last month, his REK took it a step further by placing a person in the ring against a robot. That bot was still controlled remotely rather than acting autonomously, so the fight was really closer to human vs. human with a body that doesn’t experience pain—which, to whatever extent it’s compelling, it’s in a Jackass way rather than a sports way.

Our robots aura farming humans now. Emoted on him at the end. pic.twitter.com/u5qW1sCQmu

The battle was hosted September 18 in San Francisco, according to the New York Times , and took place in a warehouse with about 100 people in attendance, rabid to see either blood or oil, whatever got spilled first.

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