I'd much rather see these things controlled remotely. I get the "cool factor" about having people in them, but let's be real, we'll never get proper destruction until the human element is removed. I want to see robots getting rekt (that's what the kids are saying these days, right?), not huge hunks of metal reduced to dry humping each other in the name of safety. Real Steel would be just as entertaining.
Rules that are clearly defined are 100% needed if they ever want to take this anywhere and get it off script. Weight is a big one. Team USA was celebrating last night like it was some huge achievement. What they did would be akin to me beating down a 12 year old and holding my fists up in victory. I see a lot of people defending this fight with the "this is what needs to happen at first" and "if you were expecting Pacific Rim you're retarded", and yeah, maybe I bought into some hype, but this was still incredibly lame.
And I don't even blame myself for the hype. I backed this on Kickstarter when the plan was to still use MKII. These guys built a $2.5M machine over the course of two years. They incorporated state of the art everything and spent months pre-programming predefined moves (uppercut, right hook, block, etc). The made many videos demonstrating their strength and agility. Yet when the time came, they didn't even throw a punch in what was dubbed A MELEE MATCH. I'm sorry, but anyway you slice it, that's nothing but weak. I wasn't expecting a Real Steel match, but I assumed we get a little punching and grappling, but no. Instead we got some lousy choreographed robot version of WWE. They didn't have a live audience because of "safety concerns", yet the announcers were so close a mech warrior crashed through their broadcasting station?
Maybe I'm just being a grouch, but I was expecting more legitimacy.