SO my un named Solarpunk Setting, has pro mech fighting as an analog to pro wrestling. It's scripted and choreographed and rad.

new idea for a fighter is a synthetic ferret shaped thing. They were originally designed to slink throught the tubes of a fusion reactor on the moon. Post Roboto-Self-Emancipation/Distributed AI governance.

The ai that ran the moon (shes cool and trans, and thinks shes a god) gave them sentience because they were lonely. They weren't exactly the best at it and ended up making a shared conciousness that occupied all the ferret bodies as a swarm. the swarm called itself geiger.

They EVENTUALLY moved to earth when transport could be organized (luckily slinky tube bots can fit in most spacecraft).

They kicked around the earth for awhile and EVENTUALLY ended up in san francisco. Where they got hooked up with Lucy Lucerne a Synthsmyth who had cobbled together a mech fighting league(non intelligent machines piloted by intelligent beings). operating from the flooded remains of Levi Stadium.

Geigers mech was her biggest project yet and was crammed with nooks and crannies to get to every subsystem.