I was never a big fan of watching sports. The few times I switched a channel to watch cricket was to sate some sort of guilt I felt, probably stemming from being South Asian. I similarly found watching football not as captivating, though I do like playing the sport. When the esports scene became widespread and reached world renown in the past decade, I followed it closely, but again, watching young gamers click and mash keyboards so fast their fingers appeared like a blur couldn’t hold my attention for long.
But then there’s giant robots fighting each other.
“People love giant robots. People love sports. MegaBots is the major leagues of giant robot sports – 2016 is the year of e(x)treme robot sports going mainstream.”
– MegaBots Co-Founder Brinkley Warren.
It seems the movie Real Steel is actually going to be remade in real life. This January at CES Megabots Inc., the company that built a giant fighting robot and proceeded to challenge Japan to a duel (the fight will happen later in 2016), is one the top 10 semifinalists of the Extreme Tech Challenge and will proceed to pitch live on stage on the 8th to have a 1 in 7 chance to score an investment from Richard Branson. Investment for what exactly? A giant robot fighting league of course. Called The MegaBot League, it’ll be something akin to a love child of UFC, Transformers and WWE.
“This is what the world has dreamt about for 20 years. MegaBots is taking all of the cutting-edge robotics research that’s been happening behind closed doors, and busting it through the wall in the most epic entertainment phenomenon of our generation.”
– MegaBots Co-Founder and co-pilot Matt Oehrlein.
Nothing sums up my excitement more than the following words from MegaBots CEO:
“An entire generation grew up with these machine characters in video games and on movie and TV screens. We know people want to see this happen, and we know it may seem improbable and ridiculous, but that’s exactly what we do at MegaBots – we are building the sports league of the future, one epic robot at a time.”
– MegaBots CEO, Gui Cavalcanti.
