Singapore got two humanoid fighting leagues in one week
ARC, a motion-capture league run by Katena, fought at *SCAPE on 7 October; two days later the Robot Fighting Championship previewed its own launch in the same theatre with VR-piloted T800s. Different organisers, different control systems — and one pilot who fought for both.
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In the space of three days this week, Singapore went from having no humanoid fighting at all to having two leagues — run by different companies, built on different control systems, staged in the same theatre.
The first is ARC, the Avatar Robotic Competition. It fought on Wednesday 7 October at *SCAPE's Ground Theatre on Orchard Link, and it is not new: it is run by Katena, a robotics company whose product is the control layer — a full-body motion-capture suit and software that maps a pilot's body onto a robot in real time — and it had already staged nights in New York and Chicago on Unitree's G1. ARC calls itself "a global combat league in which human pilots and their humanoid avatars compete as one." Singapore was its first night with a heavyweight class, the EngineAI T800, and its pilots were professional martial artists. More than 380 people came. ARC named no winner, and its founder Antonio Gai was candid about why: "Last night was not yet the sport. It was a demonstration of the idea."
The second is the Robot Fighting Championship. It appeared on Friday 9 October in the same building, as the headline act of the AICON consumer-AI festival — and AICON was explicit that this was a preview, a showcase "leading up to the official launch of RFC". Its robots were two full-size T800-class humanoids, its pilots wore VR headsets rather than motion-capture suits, and its line-up leaned on names an audience would know: the content creator Jaze Phua, a streamer, and a guest kept secret until the night. RFC has a site, rfc.sg, but no published launch date, season format or result from the showcase.
They are not the same thing under two names. Nothing connects the organisers beyond the venue, and the control systems are the real divide: ARC's pilot moves and the robot mirrors; RFC's pilot drives through a headset and controllers, as REK does in San Francisco.
The one link is a person. Eugene Chung piloted at both — and four days before ARC, he had fought on Shadow Combat League's New Dawn card in Kuala Lumpur. Three promotions in seven days, in two countries, on at least two control systems. In a sport this young, the pilots are already moving faster than the leagues.
Southeast Asia now has three humanoid fighting brands within a short flight of each other: SCL in Malaysia, and ARC and RFC in Singapore. Both new league pages are on this record, and both will carry their next dates when they publish them.
Source arcleague.com/