BattleBots: S1 E5

Another week, another Update. If your readership of this website is sporadic, or in case your memory is about as piss poor as mine, last week we saw a string of fights that all ended in brutal knock outs. In the first match of last week’s episode Backlash (a.k.a. Nightmare Jr.) obliterated Crusher with its spinning vertical disc. Immediately after that Ilya Polyakov kicked the ass of that kid’s grandfather with his middleweight thwackbot Blade Runner. Finally, the same guy who put together Tazbot in an earlier episode returned with his super heavyweight Diesector and was sunk in a single blow by Grendel’s goddamn garage door opener thing. This week it looks like we have another spinbot (like Mauler) on deck as well as another thwackbot. I’m only excited about one of these situations. Also, for some reason (worry about ratings) we get the lightweight royal rumble even though the division isn’t even over with yet.

I guess by this point it’s habit, but this episode also has one of its fights spoiled in the goddamned show opening. Yes, we’re still at a 100% spoiler rate.

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I’m assuming this particular episode was advertised pretty heavily back in the day because I was under the impression that we were finally beyond the whole “let’s explain how BattleBots works to the viewers” bit that Bil Dwyer kept throwing out in the earlier episodes this season. However, after making a shitty robot-related pun about having your head up your ass, Bil trots along right into explaining the concept behind “knock out or judges’ decision” for like the tenth time. I don’t really remember all of the commercials from back when this originally aired, so my best guess is the editors stuck the lightweight rumble in here and then played it up in the ad for that week’s episode. It really is kind of chilling to think that the show was likely struggling for ratings this far into its first season. We almost never got four more seasons of Bil Dwyer’s jokes.

Sorry, “jokes”.

Sean Salisbury claims the sport of robot combat is “America’s new pastime”, which is exactly why it started to decline in 2003 and was pretty much all but forgotten about by the American public by 2008. Right, Sean?

Shoutouts to the editors spelling DooAll’s name wrong, by the way.

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COME ON AND SLAM

Against Sean’s self-admitted better judgment, we’ve got another builder bio on our hands. This time we meet up with Lowell and Steve Nelson of Team K.I.S.S. (“keep it simple, shithead”) in their garage where they talk shop over their super heavyweight spinner SLAM. Bil introduces the father-son team using a chef analogy and in keeping with the bullshit theme he’s started, SLAM appears to be the BattleBots equivalent of an undercooked steak. Seriously, I really hope they’re spinning their robot’s shell that slow on purpose because I can literally still read the stickers on its side.

Bil insists the robot isn’t a “hippie vegetarian”, a story which is corroborated by Lowell Nelson who describes SLAM as being a “metal carnivore” with all the tact and canter of some dumbass on a History Channel special about aliens on Mars insisting that the crater that kind of looks like a face is somehow proof that Obama wasn’t born in the US. SLAM takes a pot shot at the partially disassembled Half Gassed, another Team K.I.S.S. creation, showing us that yes it does in fact love the taste of metal from other robots. What a world we live in! I guess I should also point out that SLAM doesn’t seem to visibly damage Half Gassed, which either speaks poorly of SLAM’s “weapon” or highly of Lowell’s welding abilities. Or both, fuck it.

Lowell says he doesn’t give two shits if his robot goes out of control, doing a better impression of Mauler’s builders than the Mauler team can muster themselves. He’s also wearing a great shirt that says “common man with common sense” which is really starting to paint this guy as one of those hilarious “person of the land” / “sovereign citizen” types who insist that they don’t have to do shit that cops ask them to do and end up getting tased because of it.

Lowell’s son Steve finally shows up and says he believes in “PETA”, which he defines as “People Eating Tasty Animals”. Okay. I’ve heard enough. Someone stop this ride I’m ready to get off. No? We still have about 20 seconds left? Fuck me, what else do these paragons of edgy ‘net humor circa never have to say about what their robot can’t destroy? “Unobtainium”? The shit from that god awful Avatar movie? Okay, I think I’ve seen enough. (Look, I know Avatar wasn’t out in the year 2000 and I also know that “unobtainium” is a popular in-joke in the scientific community but I’ll take any chance I can get to knock that fever dream of a movie down a notch.)

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DOOALL vs. SLAM

To be honest I’m always a bit taken aback by how builders in the super heavyweight division handle their weight allocations in regards to weaponry. Take DooAll for example, a massive tracked robot with a pneumatic spike. For reasons unknown this spike is apparently able to tilt almost a full 90 degrees and aim straight up. What fucking purpose does this serve? Is this in case DooAll has to fight an actual human android and wants to land an easy nut shot? I can get behind the rear wedge on DooAll that lifts up and down because that at least has some practical use but why the fuck would you give your robot one more point of potential failure when said feature is completely unnecessary? Why not scrap that idea and use the extra weight to put some better armor on your pneumatics, or better yet put a fucking tip on that “spike”?

DooAll’s opponent SLAM was the subject of the segment we just saw. SLAM’s primary method of attack is its spinning outer shell which has two massive spiked wedges affixed to it. The robot looks pretty intimidating, but since we literally just saw it barely scratch the paint on a test target it’s probably a safe bet that SLAM isn’t going to do much in this fight; the fact that up to this point out of SLAM’s previous three fights it’s won none of them also doesn’t help matters. Then again this is the weight class where a robot armed with literally just a spike — Gray Matter — managed to destroy a complete saw blade assembly so what the fuck do I know. For all we can tell SLAM might just fart on DooAll and cause its pneumatics to rupture and all of its screws to magically disappear and materialize five feet away.

First things first. Sean, quit pluralizing “RPM” — and while you’re at it let’s also nip this in the bud, an “RPM” is not a tangible thing. Secondly, I’m going to cross my fingers and hope that SLAM has a gasoline-powered weapon because holy shit that’s an awful lot of smoke over there in its starting square. Bil finally gives us the trivia that we’ve all been waiting on for like the past five minutes now: SLAM stands for “Steve & Lowell’s Attack Machine”. Bil continues by claiming SLAM is “getting ready to attack”. “Getting ready”, to Bil, is defined as “driving dangerously close to the arena wall while your weapon visibly slows down”. DooAll plays it straight and starts to back into SLAM with its rear wedge showing that Scott LaValley knows more about fight strategy than he does about designing a weapon that isn’t a fucking joke.

Bil goes on about how DooAll needs to “sacrifice” its rear wedge to slow down SLAM and then come at it with its pneumatic spike, ignoring the fact that SLAM landed a solid blow on DooAll and barely made a dent in its armor. It’s soon revealed that SLAM has also managed to incapacitate its own weapon with that single hit. I don’t think this is a case of SLAM being too powerful for its own good, but instead a case as to why building a robot out of a fucking clothes dryer is a bad idea. SLAM takes a hit from the Killsaws that visibly jostles the robot and tosses it into the air about a foot or so and Bil tries to give some life advice while DooAll realizes it’s got an easy win.

Instead of seizing this moment, DooAll misfires with its spike and starts doing drifts around the Ramrod hazards while Sean suggests that DooAll might be having some control issues of its own. Yeah, no shit, but is that really something that they’d be able to tell, though? Because I see no difference in DooAll’s driving “skill” (or lack thereof) between now and 30 seconds ago. DooAll has been driving around like an elderly woman this whole match. Scott starts fucking with the parts on his transmitter that raise and lower his robot’s pneumatics because it was such an important feature to have and we’re about to see it come into play here in a big way and by that I mean we’re going to see DooAll crash into the arena wall and then kick it into reverse gear and drive all the fucking way across the arena — sixty-four feet — into the other goddamned wall.

While this is going on the referee counts out SLAM even though it’s still moving because this fight has gone on about two minutes too long despite the fact that they might as well just let the last 9 seconds play out since they’ve invested this much screen time to this suicide bomb of a fight. You know it’s a fuck up when even the crowd is giving thumbs down to both fucking robots regardless of who won. Scott LaValley agrees that it was a piss poor match, but Donna D’Errico isn’t listening and congratulates him again anyways because that’s all she’s paid to say and her brain is located just below her neck and above her navel instead of inside her skull. Also, she has two of them and they’re both made of silicone.

WINNER: DooAll, KO

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After the break, Sean Salisbury fucks up his first line and introduces the coming fight as between two super heavyweights. No Sean, that was the last fight but I can forgive you this time since DooAll and SLAM fought like a couple of parked cars. Bil Dwyer makes a quip about how American school children don’t know a goddamned thing about other cultures — which is true — and that they wouldn’t know that “Mjollnir” is the name of Thor’s hammer. 16 years after this episode has aired I think it’s safe to say American kids still don’t give two shits about other cultures, because our society is a fucking failure, but thanks to Marvel shitting out a bunch of stupid superhero movies for society’s very own Neaderthals to consume I think everyone knows about Thor now. He’s had like nine movies or something in the course of four years, or at least that’s what it feels like.

I think Bill Nye socked Sean in the face after last week’s “Billy Nye” send off, because Sean doesn’t gussy this one up at all. Last week Bill took 19 seconds to describe to us how a goddamned wedge works. This week, he introduces all of Biohazard in just 13. You sure there’s not anything else you’d like to say about the robot, Bill? I mean, we’re dealing with a former BattleBots champion here; surely you could explain the concept behind Biohazard’s four bar lifting arm? No? Just some random bullshit about the size of its batteries? Fuck you, Bill.

Sean sneaks in a “Billy” at the end because in the BattleBots headcannon I’ve concocted, Sean secretly agrees with me.

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MJOLLNIR vs. BIOHAZARD

I’ve long had this “theory” which states certain types of robot designs become ineffective depending upon which weight class you’re getting into. For example, as we’ve seen thus far a full body spinner works pretty well for a lightweight (Ziggo) but kinda sucks on a super heavyweight (SLAM). A “thwackbot” like Blade Runner is very much something restricted to smaller weight classes when it comes to questions about weapon efficacy. Bad Attitude was the victim of a lucky shot last week and that’s definitely not indicative of thwackbots in the middleweight division, so you can imagine my surprise to see Mjollnir — a fucking heavyweight — roll into the arena looking like a cut rate Blade Runner. Mjollnir is 30 pounds below the heavyweight maximum. That’s half a lightweight. You mean to tell me you couldn’t come up with some way to spend that weight on a real weapon? Also, I’m not doing my job if I’m not pointing out the hilarity of Mark Beiro botching the pronunciation of “Mjollnir” immediately after referencing its pronunciation in his fight intro. Keep fighting the good fight Mark.

Mark introduces Biohazard as the #1 ranked heavyweight which immediately contradicts Sean’s remark from two weeks ago that Vlad the Impaler is the “best ever” heavyweight. Gee, it’s almost like they were playing that up to keep viewers or something. Using the power of mathematics I disproved Sean’s comment so I don’t need to do it a second time, but I will reiterate that why Vlad might have more overall wins than Biohazard, Biohazard has a more favorable win-loss ratio and has less total losses. Suck on that, Salisbury. How come I don’t get hired to do this shit? Anyways, Biohazard was a veteran contender even at the time that this event was broadcast; if you recall from our coverage of Robot Wars: The First Wars, Biohazard made some cameo appearances throwing opponents around at an American Robot Wars event. Now, here it is in all its glory.

Before the fight starts Bil gives us some neat trivia about the drivers, such as how Don Lariviere used to drive race cars and that this will somehow give him an edge in the pits. Yeah, maybe if he’s dumb enough to put actual car tires on his robot. Bil’s other piece of trivia is that Biohazard cost $12,000 to build. Not only is that absolutely ludicrous, but if you lop off two of those zeroes you’ll get the cost of Mjollnir’s build. See? I can do bullshit trivia too.

Mjollnir makes a statement right away, and that statement is “which way is forward”. Now, I can understand that when you have an invertible robot such as Mjollnir it might be hard to tell which way is up if you’ve specifically gone through the trouble of not marking either side of your robot with a decal or something… basically exactly what Don has done with Mjollnir. However, Mjollnir doesn’t just back into the arena wall once. It doesn’t even do it twice. Don floors his robot in the completely wrong direction three goddamned times. Had this been one of his scooter races or whatever he’d have just killed half the fucking field. Mjollnir manages to land a few glancing blows on Biohazard who up until this point in the match has been holding off because its opponent happens to be behaving exactly like a rabid lion.

Of note is how during Mjollnir’s conniption fit the robot takes a glancing shot from the Killsaws. Since the heavyweight is pretty much 90% tire, that’s the part of Mjollnir that takes the buzz. Sean and Bil start talking about flat tires again completely oblivious that one of Mjollnir’s wheels is fucking flat now. This fucking guy literally put pneumatic wheels on his robot. It’s not like Mjollnir has never been to a BattleBots event before (it competed in their 1999 Pay-Per-View special) so Don can’t feign ignorance of there being things like saws and spikes in the arena; he’s been to BattleBots before, he knows there’s sharp things everywhere, and yet he still decides that having air-filled tires isn’t somehow the dumbest fucking idea on the planet. This just may be the first fight in BattleBots history where the judges award negative points.

By this point even the commentators are getting kind of tired of Mjollnir’s bullshit. They haven’t yet noticed the whole “flat tire” thing yet, but Bil is chirping about Thor’s hammer coming with an instruction manual. Biohazard finally deploys its lifting arm to try and pin Mjollnir against the wall, but seconds later we find out that it’s impossible to render something as goofy as Mjollnir immobile which is why Biohazard hasn’t even been bothering with its weapon. Sean finally notices that Mjollnir’s tires are flat and rather than excitedly scream about it Bil Dwyer doesn’t say a goddamned thing. Mjollnir’s design is failing in a pretty significant way as we speak and a passing mention from Sean is the best we get. That’s because Sean is apparently doing a Looney Tunes gag and he has to realize the tires are flat twice before we get a rise out of either host.

Since it’s taken the commentators over a minute to notice Mjollnir’s wheels they’ve deteriorated to the point where one of them is actually starting to come off of its rim. Biohazard gets an amazing stroke of luck by dropping Mjollnir off at the Hellraiser where Mjollnir’s weapon gets stuck and the robot gets thrashed by the Killsaws in the process. Really this whole fight has just been Biohazard letting Mjolnir kill itself in the slowest way possible, so to try and liven up the snoozefest Biohazard takes a couple of shots from the saws itself, but Bil still starts complaining about this match being boring. Yeah, we’re 0-2 tonight for “exciting” matches aren’t we? I can see why they stuck a lightweight rumble in this episode now.

After the fight Donna asks Carlo Bertocchini, Biohazard’s builder, when he knew he was going to win. Rather than be a dick and say “the moment I looked at the fight brackets” he acts like a good sport and says it was anyone’s game until Mjollnir finally lost all the air in its tires. Carlo isn’t fooling any of us, but might be able to fool to Donna however, and he does. One of the Sklars meets up with Don and congratulates him on losing the air pressure in 100% of the wheels on his robot. In a cruel twist of fate, Don responds with “just keep whacking until the batteries die”, a phrase that would end up being plastered on the BattleBots.com website until the end of fucking time itself.

WINNER: Biohazard, 9-0

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LIGHTWEIGHT RUMBLE

SHRIKE — NO TOLERANCE II — THORN

TENTOMUSHI — THE AGGRESSIVE POLYGON — SHAFT

THE MISSING LINK — THE DISPOSABLE HERO

DAS BOT — BACKLASH

I’ve already thrown this out there a couple of times, but it bears repeating again. I’ve been complaining about how this show continuously spoils fights through its opening credits but now by sticking the lightweight rumble right in the middle of the series they’re pretty much casting potential spoilers for the entire goddamned weight class. Rumbles happen after the tournament, just in case you were wondering. Don’t believe what Bil says about how “some of them still hope to win it all while others are done” because that’s just some bullshit that the show’s writers put together. Speaking of bullshit, remember that time ABC tried to pass off a 3-way battle as a “rumble”? Here’s the year 2000 coming back from the past to show them how it’s really done.

Competing in this rumble is Shrike which I think is meant to look like a bird but instead more closely resembles a pile of parts with flames painted on it. Up next is No Tolerance II, or “Wheels: The Robot”, along with Thorn, an unimaginative piece of shit that Sean Salisbury dismisses by not playing into Bil’s attempt at a running gag. There’s Tentomushi built by Lisa Winter of Plan X fame, the sandbox robot being one of the most creative in the circuit while also being absolutely terrible in the arena. Will Wright — the guy who created all those fucking Sim games — built The Aggressive Polygon and the best he could do for a weapon was stick a square on a power drill. Rounding out the fleet of Robot Action League participants in this rumble is Shaft whom we’ve already seen this season. The Missing Link returns from its grave this time sporting its actual weapon instead of a phone book. The Disposable Hero follows and gets its name from the fact that it’s utter garbage with no armor. For some reason they had to go to an outside shot to introduce Das Bot, probably because it emits pure stupid, and finally there’s Backlash which just recently crushed a little kid’s spirits last week.

DO NOT READ THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE SPOILERS. I also want to address the fact that the reason why so many of these robots appeared to be in the red and blue squares is because the editors were purposefully using footage from these robots’ original fight introductions from other matches. This was done mostly to hide the fact that Backlash should be sporting six fucking “WINNER” medals by this point — spoiling the entire lightweight division before it’s over — but also because some robots, such as Das Bot and The Disposable Hero, were destroyed in battle. Showing Das Bot from the front, a robot whom we have not yet seen on the show, would’ve revealed that something is amiss when we get to see Backlash rip it apart a couple weeks from now. It’s a clever trick, but as you’ll eventually see the editors couldn’t exactly help the fact that during the actual rumble Backlash magically obtains the 6 magical medallions that let it defeat Ganondorf; they just hope you aren’t paying that close of attention. SPOILERS ARE OVER, CARRY ON.

Much like how rumbles are currently handled in BattleBots, back when this event was taped it was customary to disable all of the arena’s hazards. As such, we won’t be seeing Shaft or anyone fly through the air while its wheels blow up. As the rumble is underway Thorn makes a bee line for Backlash, but because its chassis is apparently all jacked up Thorn succeeds in spinning around in place in the corner of the shot while Das Bot tries pushing Backlash around. Das Bot should have a lifting arm, bu– er, nevermind that’s more spoilers. Oops. The Disposable Hero rolls into view somehow losing the entire front half of its chassis in the first nine seconds of the match, again assuming its fight “introduction” was to be believed. The truth of the matter is Backlash previously demolished The Disposable Hero in “about twelve seconds” to quote Jim Smentowski directly.

Tentomushi gets a brief moment on camera doing nothing of merit while Bil starts explaining that The Aggressive Polygon is a multibot and the little green and red wheels are its minibots, because even 16 years ago the Robot Action League still hadn’t given up on that stupid gimmick. Granted, I should give credit where due because there’s a brief shot of the main robot of Aggressive Polygon not doing a goddamned thing which means that its tiny servo-driven minibots somehow managed to outlive the rest of the robot. Meanwhile, Backlash is trying to beat up on Thorn because it’s an easy target and Thorn’s shape is perfect for Backlash’s pizza wheel. Shrike tries to come in and give Backlash the ol’ “surprise buttsex” treatment but its plan fails when Backlash does a sweet juke and rips one of Shrike’s motors out and throws it across the fucking arena. Blink and you’ll miss it.

No Tolerance shows up and starts beating on the chassis of the dead Aggressive Polygon because otherwise the only “live” targets still in the match appear to be robots that can do substantial damage to its ridiculously massive Tonka truck wheels (i.e. Backlash). Tentomushi is dead on the spike strip, signaling the end of its “spirited performance” in the rumble, while Shaft floors it across the arena looking for a target to hit that isn’t Backlash. Unable to catch any other robots, Backlash goes back and starts fucking with Thorn. The Disposable Hero, a robot that couldn’t last longer than about 10 seconds in the arena, has somehow managed to survive this long and tries to dick with No Tolerance’s rear left wheel. Backlash continues to wreck Thorn which, much like The Disposable Hero, has managed to not die; it’s chassis is bent up in ways that probably fold into other goddamned dimensions, but it’s still moving against all odds.

Das Bot finally gets back at Backlash and starts shoving it around. If you look closely you can see Das Bot is literally using power drills with wheels stuck on them as its drive system. Don’t get me wrong, cordless drill motors are pretty common solutions for lightweight robots… but usually people like, take them out of the fucking drills first. Thus far the commentators have done a pretty good job of covering up the fact that the lightweight division is technically already over with, but Bil fucks it all up and says Backlash is the “#1 ranked” lightweight in passing. That’s kind of hard to do when you’re a rookie contender like Backlash is, Bil. Backlash starts ripping up the Lexan armor of Das Bot while the camera slowly zooms in on the action, revealing the robot’s sizable collection of “WINNER” medallions. Oops.

Bil compares Backlash’s hammering to the monotonous drum solo in Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vita”, a 17-minute clusterfuck of a “song” that clocks in almost as long as this episode of BattleBots, because that’s what passed for music in the sixties and I’m somehow supposed to believe that this goddamned time vampire is meaningful to music history in some measurable way. They cut out 14 minutes of bullshit for the radio edit of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vita”. Can you believe this shit? That’s more than 80% of the track. If you’re pissed off because I’m trampling on your jam and want to try and argue music history with me the next time you get an assignment to write a five page essay I want you to write the last four pages in the Wingdings typeface and let me know how well that goes for you.

Holy shit, for a minute there I forgot I was supposed to be writing about BattleBots.

No Tolerance kicks it into reverse and casually bumps into Backlash, the impact of which sets off its weapon which now that I actually look at it appears to be a water spigot on a chain? I’m assuming it’s meant to be a type of flail weapon but why a spigot and not something a bit more reasonable like a padlock or a ballast? Did No Tolerance’s builder see one of those stupid porch decorations where it looks like there’s a floating spigot pouring water in a bucket and think that they’re somehow imbued with magical essence? News flash dude, magic isn’t real and the fact that Backlash has just given your robot two brand new assholes is your proof. No Tolerance is for sale, by the way, I’m sure its owner will knock a few dollars off for the bodywork you’ll now need to have done.

There are still a few robots left in the rumble but really this match has come down to Das Bot getting in Backlash’s face and not letting up. Bil notes that many of the contenders are stuck along the arena wall, then demands to know where Tentomushi is not realizing he literally just answered his own question. The commentators note Shrike who’s just sitting there and suggest that it’s knocked out. Yes, Shrike is knocked out. Backlash removed one of its drive motors and threw it at the wall like two minutes ago. Sean ponders the existence of Shaft despite the fact that we’ve casually seen it throughout the rumble, especially right as Sean brings up the subject because Shaft literally drives right through Das Bot and Backlash’s scuffle and takes out one of The Aggressive Polygon’s minibots in the process.

The final few moments of the rumble see Shaft, Das Bot, and No Tolerance ganging up on Backlash and, with timing and execution so impeccable that I’m legitimately envious of it, The Disposable Hero rolls into view in the final two seconds of the rumble and beautifully takes everyone’s attention away from Backlash & Co.

As the show gets ready to go to commercial Bil says “everybody wins”, but when they come back the commentators say “Backlash wins” even though the ruling is unofficial. You wanna know who really won the rumble? Mouser Mecha Catbot. No, I’m not fucking with you, and I know Mouser Mecha Catbot wasn’t even in the rumble we just saw. BattleBots runs multiple consolation rumbles before doing a “grand” rumble in each division, but I guess that’s too complicated to explain on television so they chose the rumble where Backlash broke everything because ratings.

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Of importance, this week’s episode marks the end of the qualification rounds for each division. From this point forward every match we see will be from the quarterfinals or higher in each respective weight class. Because of this, we’ve got a new miniature segment on our hands where Bil and Sean straight up tell us who’s competing in the next episode. Here’s next week’s lineup along with me trying to provide the closest I can come to an “educated guess” even though I’ve known the outcomes of all of these matches for almost two fucking decades now.

Alpha Raptor vs. Tentomushi: Gimmick bot is going to lose.

Voltarc vs. Biohazard: Both have beaten ridiculous opponents to get here and both are pretty much the same exact design (wedge with a lifting arm), but my money is on Biohazard by virtue of its design featuring a wedge on every side instead of being one giant wedge like Voltarc. Speaking of Voltarc, I also predict Stephen Felk will do his best impression of a guy with Tourettes syndrome being electrocuted.

Rammstein vs. Mechadon: Holy shit, that’s a robot spider. Before he built the Dr. Claw Dildo Table, Mark Setrakian built Mechadon, a super heavyweight walker bot that looks like Pressure Drop all ‘roided out… minus a weapon. Tough call because Mechadon is the epitome of form over function, but Rammstein was built by Team Loki and we all know how well their robots perform. I’m going to consult a reputable source for my prediction — the show’s opening credits — and say that Rammstein will have the upper hand in this match.

Sean says goodbye to the viewers at home and forgets to give shoutouts to Bill Nye, lending credence to the idea that Nye beat him with a big book of science at some point during the taping of this series. This week’s episode doesn’t have a Hit of the Week even though Bil Dwyer says there is one, instead the “Hit of the Week” is just a clip show of the lightweight rumble that we just saw in case you somehow forgot about it during the commercial break.

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Thank you for checking out yet another installment here on The Update, it’s always a pleasure! Plus, it helps make it feel like time is going by faster as we approach just under 3 weeks until the debut of the new season on ABC. As you might imagine, I’ll be putting season one on the back burner (again) once that happens. Until then, we’ve got time for two more episodes by my watch. Make sure you’re following BattleBots Update on Facebook if you aren’t already that way you’ll get notifications when new content goes up, kind of like how this one almost went up a whole day late!

See you next week!

– Draco