‘Just the right amount of weird’: A look inside San Francisco’s underground robot fighting club

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – Hundreds of people gathered last weekend outside an ordinary warehouse in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood for an exclusive invitation to the Silicon Colosseum, an underground fight club with mechanical competitors.

An online invitation was sent to a list of approximately 2,000 people the day before the event. The sold-out crowd paid $30 per ticket for the chance to see robots fight robots.

“Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed guests and community members, investors in the future and (of course) robots, I am extremely pleased to invite you to the premier showcase of cutting-edge robotic supremacy,” the invitation read.

On the evening of the event, the crowd gathered around a caged octagon. Preliminary rounds began with (human) volunteers facing off in “Taser knife fights,” slashing each other with rubber blades attached to stun guns.

When the robots were ready, the “house robot”, a Booster T1 robot named “Booster”, was lowered into the ring. Standing just under 4 feet tall and weighing 66 pounds, the boxing glove-wearing robot drew cheers from the crowd as it shadow boxed around the ring.

In the first robot fight of the night, Booster took on a larger K-Scale robot, repeatedly knocking over the roughly 80-pound headless machine. Later that night, Booster also boxed a bipedal dog-like robot named Gladiator. Although the bipedal robot easily knocked Booster down during the match, the humanoid won over the crowd on several occasions with his ability to right himself.

Despite problems with some of the robots for Saturday’s card, event organizer Verda Korzeniewski, a 20-year-old Bay Area transplant, told Nexstar’s KRON that attendees enjoyed the show.

“They loved it,” Korzeniewski said. “Someone said it was just the right amount of weird. It covered so many things: robot fights, human fights, quadrupeds versus humanoids.”

A robotics and software engineer by training, Korzeniewski left his jobs in the robotics industry behind before focusing on his vision for the Silicon Colosseum.

“I was so addicted to robots that I dedicated my whole life to making them,” she said.

Korzeniewski thanked her fellow organizers for helping her put together her second robot fighting night. (The first Silicon Colosseum took place in July.) Shortly after the first show, she had also explained what it took to make the event happen.

“When I left my job at a humanoid robot company to start an underground humanoid robot fight club, almost no one believed in me or the idea,” she wrote on social media. “I had no money to buy robots and knew very few people who had the ability to acquire them. Luckily, I was able to find the best of the best, our motley dream team. The dream is still alive and kicking in this city of madness and psychological warfare.”

Those interested in attending future robot battles are encouraged to join the Silicon Colosseum Partiful list. Korzeniewski said she plans to hold another robot fight in November; however, she did not reveal where the next event might take place.

“It’s an underground fight club,” she said. “You know I can’t tell you that.”