Humanoid Robots Fought in Riyadh as Hero Esports Launched a New Robot Sports League, With Online Creators Running Rival Teams

Hero Esports launched its new robot sports league, CyberHero, in Riyadh on September 9 — the Middle East's first humanoid robot combat event. In the debut fight, Team FBA beat Team AL Majd 4-3 after seven rounds, tied 3-3 through the first six before FBA's robot landed a knockdown kick in the decider. The invite-only launch marks the opening stop in what Hero Esports says will be an eight-city inaugural season across the Middle East, Europe, the Americas and Asia.

The robots themselves were EngineAI T800 units — 1.73 metres tall, 75-85 kg, 29 joints, built to punch, kick, fall, get back up, and occasionally dance. None of it was autonomous: each team ran on a builder-coder-driver split, with a driver making the real-time calls once the fighting started, inside a purpose-built octagonal arena at MBC Studio 1.

The teams were run by two of the region's biggest online creators — MENA personality AboFlah and Saudi sports creator Bashar Arabi — facing off as rival team owners, with Bilal Fadili, Ta7o, Ahmad AlKhateb and Team Falcons' Micky also on hand. DJ Tokyo Machine played a live set between rounds, and Saudi Esports Federation chairman Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Sultan al Saud attended, calling it a boundary-pusher for "audience experience and competition."

CyberHero is a snapshot of how fast embodied AI has moved. A few years ago, a humanoid robot that could throw a clean punch and get back on its feet after falling was a lab demo, not a ticketed show. Now robotics companies like EngineAI are building machines stable enough to fight, and entertainment groups are treating them as a new kind of athlete — building leagues, broadcast formats and fan-facing personalities around them the way esports did a decade ago. An industry that barely existed a few years back now has a tour schedule.

Behind the bet is Danny Tang, Hero Esports' co-founder and CEO since November 2024. Tang graduated with honors from Bryn Mawr College in economics and mathematics before earning a management degree from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, then co-founded Hero Esports in 2016, running it as CFO and head of its Global Strategy Office before taking over as CEO. She's spoken at the inaugural Olympic Esports Games Publisher & Developer Forum, Cannes Lions, the Milken Institute Asia Summit and Saudi Arabia's LEAP conference, and has been interviewed by CNBC, Sky News, Nikkei, the Financial Times and Bloomberg TV. In 2022, J.P. Morgan and EY named her one of their 100 Women Leaders in Asia-Pacific; in 2024, she was inducted into the Esports Insider Hall of Fame.

Hero Esports, which Tang co-founded, says it runs more than 7,000 esports competitions a year and is backed by Tencent and Savvy Games Group — operating titles including Honor of Kings, Peacekeeper Elite, League of Legends and VALORANT, and serving as China partner of the Esports World Cup. The company is now setting up a global technology lab at its Shanghai headquarters and launching a CyberHero Saudi-China Scholar Program to connect young talent with the robotics industries of both countries.