Boxing Robot: From Sparring Bags to ABB Cobots

For decades a boxing robot was a toy on the kitchen table. In September 2026 one stepped into a cage in San Francisco and kicked a man across it, and within two weeks California's athletic commission had told the promoter to stop. This post looks at how boxers trained before machines, from sparring partners to punching bags and the 1964 Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots game, and then at the humanoid fight that went viral this autumn and the law it ran into. It ends with where training robots could go next, including how ABB cobots might hold pads, and why safety settles most of the questions.

Humanoid robots in a staged boxing match inside a cage at a robotics exhibition, November 2025. Photo: Jack145945 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How boxers trained before machines

For most of boxing history the best training tool was another person. A sparring partner hits back, moves and punishes mistakes, but sparring is tiring and risky, so fighters have always wanted something to hit that does not hit back. Punching bags have been part of martial arts and swordplay training for as long as there are records of military training. Asian arts have their own versions, such as the Okinawan makiwara striking post and the Chinese wooden dummy, the mook jong.

Two women spar next to a hanging speed bag in Queensland, 1916. Photo: State Library of Queensland via Wikimedia Commons (no known restrictions)

By the late nineteenth century bags were sold to the public; an 1892 advertisement offered "The Lively Sparring Bag." The small, air-filled speed bag, anchored to a rebound platform, was popular in gyms from the 1920s to the 1940s, while the heavy bag, hung from chains or ropes, built power. Later came maize or slip bags for practising head movement and body opponent bags shaped like a human torso, which let fighters land strikes that would be unsafe on a real sparring partner. All of them wait to be hit. None moves on its own.

Boxer Chalky Wright works the speed bag in 1942. Photo: Unknown author via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The first boxing robots were for fun. Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, designed by Marvin Glass and Associates and made by Louis Marx and Company from 1964, put two plastic fighters, Red Rocker and Blue Bomber, in a yellow ring. Each player pressed plunger buttons to throw punches, and a clean hit to the head popped the loser's head up off its shoulders. Decades later, remote-controlled robot fights such as BattleBots took the idea into arenas, though there the machines fight each other and no person stands in the ring.

Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, the boxing toy first made by Louis Marx and Company in 1964. Photo: Ashwin Kumar / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

A humanoid in the cage and California's answer

On 18 September 2026 the San Francisco promoter REK, short for Robot Entertainment Kombat, put the online creator Frankie LaPenna in a cage with an EngineAI T800 humanoid it called Rekbot. Footage showed the robot kicking LaPenna across the enclosure. According to reports, a human operator controlled the robot remotely with VR equipment, while the robot's own systems handled balance and posture. On 22 September NBC News reported that the promoter was seeing heavy demand for more bouts.

A Unitree G1 humanoid robot, a small humanoid of the kind now used in robot boxing shows. Photo: Sayanesy / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

REK founder Cix Liv said on 30 September that California had sent a cease-and-desist notice over the "unsanctioned human versus humanoid robot cage fight," and USA Today and The New York Times reported the order on 7 and 8 October. Liv argued that the state's combat sports law covers contests "between two or more persons," which in his reading leaves a robot outside it. Nobody has settled that yet. The man in the cage was a person and so was the operator outside it, while the body landing the kicks was a machine.

A Strikeforce mixed martial arts bout in a cage, 2011. Human fights like this need a licence from a state athletic commission. Photo: Matthew Tosh / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

No ABB robot has taken part in a fight, and I would not want one to. ABB's industrial arms, from the IRB 1200 to the IRB 6700, are built to work behind fences or with safety systems that slow or stop them when people come close. Training is a different matter, and here an ABB robot is a possibility. A GoFa CRB 15000 cobot has torque sensors in every joint and stops when it feels unexpected contact, so it could hold a pad and move it at limited speed, with SafeMove capping speed and keeping the arm in set zones, much as in our table tennis robot post.

Lead through teaching: moving an ABB GoFa arm by hand. Photo: ABB

Where boxing robots go next

At home, smart training gear looks more likely than a humanoid opponent. Bags and pads with sensors can already count punches and measure how hard and fast they land. A robot arm that moves a pad to a new spot, or a target that swings back slowly, would go further. Anything that strikes back at a person in a living room, though, has to be weak and slow enough to be harmless, and that caps how realistic it can feel. For most home buyers, sensors will do more than motors.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot at a work table. Photo: ABB

Fight events will probably keep coming, in California or somewhere else. Teleoperated humanoids are cheaper than they were, and a video of a robot knocking someone down spreads fast. EngineAI had already published a clip of a T800 kicking its own padded chief executive, Zhao Tongyang. Regulators now have to decide whether a remote operator counts as a fighter and who is liable when a robot hurts someone. Robot against robot bouts, as in BattleBots, avoid most of that.

The BattleBots arena in Las Vegas, where remote controlled robots fight each other. Photo: TaurusEmerald / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Cost and safety are the open problems, and skills come close behind. Humanoid robots are still expensive and need trained operators. A punch from a heavy machine can do more damage than one from a person, and no referee can stop a robot faster than its own software can. Anyone building a training robot has to plan force limits and stop functions from the first sketch, the way factory cobots are designed and certified, and that takes engineering know-how most boxing gyms do not have.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 connecting test equipment to a refrigerator at Electrolux. Photo: ABB

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