TechAINewsCalifornia is trying to shut down robot vs. human cage matchesThe state says Rek, the \u2018humanoid robot fighting league,\u2019 can\u2019t host fights involving \u2018any human\u2019 in California without permission.The state says Rek, the \u2018humanoid robot fighting league,\u2019 can\u2019t host fights involving \u2018any human\u2019 in California without permission.by Jay PetersOct 8, 2026, 8:06 PM UTCShareGiftImage: The VergeJay Peters is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.The California State Athletic Commission sent a cease-and-desist letter to a startup that hosted a match between a human and a robot last month, as reported by The New York Times.The fight, which took place on September 18th, pitted a human, Frankie LaPenna, against a humanoid robot owned by a tech startup, Rek, that was being piloted by a human using what the NYT described as a \u201cremote virtual-reality system.\u201d Rek says it is the \u201cthe humanoid robot fighting league\u201d on its website, and the robot appears to be one from EngineAI but with a Terminator-like head swapped on top.You can watch a replay of the fight on YouTube:The CEO of Rek, Cix Liv, posted the letter to X on September 30th, which called the fight \u201cunsanctioned\u201d and demanded that Liv and REK stop \u201cholding, promoting or advertising any boxing or mixed martial arts contest match, or exhibition, involving any human\u201d in California without the approval of the California State Athletic Commission. \u201cWe made it boys,\u201d Liv said.Rek\u2019s next planned match, which takes place on Friday, will feature two robots with weapons fighting each other.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Jay PetersAINewsRobotTechMost PopularGTA VI leaks continue with a lengthy (and very nude) gameplay videoGoogle invests millions in Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s efforts to create a \u2018virtual cell\u2019Teenage Engineering\u2019s CEO says it\u2019ll stop making synthsHow Microsoft built its MacBook Pro competitorAnthropic bans \u2018abusive or cruel behavior\u2019 toward ClaudeAdvertiser Content FromThis is the title for the native ad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TechAINewsCalifornia is trying to shut down robot vs. human cage matchesThe state says Rek, the \u2018humanoid robot fighting league,\u2019 can\u2019t host fights involving \u2018any human\u2019 in California without permission.The state says Rek, the \u2018humanoid robot\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}