Humanoid robots fight it out in Riyadh - Semafor

On an otherwise quiet Wednesday evening at Riyadh Boulevard, a sort of Times Square-meets-seaside-funfair, a bizarre experiment in the future of Gen Alpha entertainment was underway.

Two blue and yellow humanoid robots attempted to beat each other up with punches twice as hard as Mike Tyson’s. Sponsored by Hero Esports, the brainchild of Chinese billionaire Dino Ying, the event was the first of its kind outside China and a blueprint for a global sports league envisioned as Monster Trucks for the Terminator era.

Saudi royals, investors, tech nerds, influencers — and a Semafor journalist, who is none of those — watched robots struggle to face each other, occasionally falling over and sometimes breaking bits off their opponent. But it wasn’t all slapstick fun: one robot leapt through the air with a Street Fighter-style flying kick and, surprisingly, didn’t topple over.

While not yet proof that Saudi Arabia’s roughly $250 million investment into Hero Esports will pay off, the event was a reminder that the kingdom can still create spectacles and stick the landing.