REK is what happens when America gets the robots
No judging rubric, no university teams. San Francisco's REK puts UFC fighters in VR headsets, sells out nightclubs, and just opened a storefront full of six-foot fighting machines.
Hosted on YouTube. Roboxing does not host this video.
China's leagues are engineering contests wearing gloves. REK — Robot Entertainment Kombat, founded in San Francisco by Cix Liv — is the other answer: a ticketed show, in a nightclub, where the robots are avatars.
The machines are modified Unitree G1s, about 4.5 feet and 80 pounds, and the pilots wear VR headsets and fight through them with their own bodies. The pilots are the point: REK has put actual professional fighters in the headset, including UFC featherweight Hyder Amil and MMA veteran Jessica-Rose Clark. When the robot throws a combination, a fighter threw it.
It sells. Tickets ran $60 to $80 in San Francisco, and by August 2026 REK listed twelve events across eight cities. An America tour through Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Austin, Miami and New York reportedly sold out every stop — reporting on the exact dates is contradictory, which is why no REK fixtures appear in our calendar yet, but the sell-outs themselves were reported repeatedly.
The most interesting move is the newest one: a San Francisco storefront where the public can watch, train on, and eventually rent or buy fighting humanoids — with six-foot machines already on the floor. Liv has said the plan is a full league on purpose-built robots of roughly six feet and 200 pounds. If URKL is building a Formula 1, REK is building a boxing gym with merch — and it is not obvious the second is the worse business.