BattleBots: S8 – What Got Cut, Part 2

[All of the fights in this article are available on BattleBots’ official YouTube channel.]

Welcome back to BattleBots Update. Like I mentioned in last week’s article we’re currently in the middle of season 8’s “What Got Cut” special. We didn’t really have one for season 6, season 7 had one article, and because the show just keeps growing the latest season has mandated that I split the article up into two pieces because otherwise I’d have had to feature a staggering ELEVEN fights in one post and god damn if you think having to wait a couple months for an update from me was bad let me tell you a thing or two about attempting to write that monstrosity. Out of consideration for my own well being, and also out of respect for the free time of this website’s readers, I featured 6 of the 11 unaired battles last week and the remaining ones are in this article. Sure, I’m gagging over just how many fights there are to cover, but that’s a good thing! The consistent growth of the “What Got Cut” articles just shows that BattleBots both as a sport and as a show are doing better each year. It’s better than having less content to cover that’s for sure, so here’s the second half of the special which I’ve decided to nickname “What Else Got Cut”.

As I said last week there was really no preference or reason why specific battles are in that article versus this one. They are not organized by quality or content, etc. My only personal point was to avoid featuring the same robot twice in the same post because some of the robots with unaired battles (Predator, Chomp, Basilisk, Double Dutch, Ultimo Destructo, and Valkyrie) actually have more than one of them. Looking at that list I realize that’s treading awfully close to “every single fucking robot”. It’s impressive that I managed to actually achieve this. This is like conceptual Tetris — Conceptris, if you will.

[Editor’s Note: I just realized that Double Fucking Dutch has 3 unaired battles and is in this article twice because of it. God damn it, Kevin. BUILD A BETTER ROBOT NEXT TIME. I guess this is what I get for taunting you with a Giant Washer last season. Karma is weird.]

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DOUBLE DUTCH vs. GAMMA 9
(FIGHT NIGHT ROUND 9)

[This match is available on BattleBots’ official YouTube channel.]

Double Dutch is the first (of many) robots to receive its second “What Got Cut” feature of the season. It’s a robot that never really took off. I mean, it’s blades sure as hell “took off”, but the robot itself just did not have a very good year. Its only televised battle was its appearance in the Desperado tournament where Gigabyte blew it to fucking pieces and by the end of the round had turned it into “Singular Dutch”. When Double Dutch was previously turned down for season 7 Kevin Lung did the only reasonable thing and continued work on his robot, eventually turning Double Dutch’s rough prototype into the robot that competed this year. That was probably for the best too, because if this version of Double Dutch can’t hold together then I’d hate to see what the “season 7” version would’ve been like. We probably would’ve been dealing with the second coming of Scrap Daddy. In any case this is a robot right on the cusp of being effective because in last week’s article Double Dutch (along with its partner Basilisk) won their tag team fight. The fight was a total shitshow from start to finish, and it was eventually turned into a commercial for a stupid dinosaur movie, but Double Dutch was the breakout star of that match. Even if it was just for one hit.

Gamma 9 was ripped off in its previous (and only) fight, and no I’m not just saying that because Gamma 9’s team sent me a T-shirt. In the most astounding case of “came out of left field” that this sport has seen, Kurt Nemeth returned from robot retirement to compete at BattleBots this year. If his robot looks like something that was built in 2003 and then just sat in a garage through two fucking presidencies that’s because that’s probably exactly what happened. Kurt’s team just dropped off the face of the planet after the Comedy Central series ended which is a shame because this is a team that had been competing since the Robot Wars days. I wouldn’t say that anything they built was particularly good, but it was sure as shit iconic. Namreko looked like a leather daddy Dalek, Gammatron was a beast of a walker, and Gammacide was literally I think just two Walmart fatty scooters hooked together in tandem with a giant goddamned snowplow tacked onto its front end. The robots, whether intentionally or not, came to represent an era of the sport that has long since ended… but Gamma 9 aims to turn back the clock. It failed to do so in its only other battle because it made the rotten.com Top 10 when it took a bullet to the face courtesy of Double Jeopardy (which sheared its hydraulic lines), then The Four Horsemen bit it on the ass until it quit working.

The plan for Double Dutch seems to be only spinning one weapon at a time, presumably so that the events of its tag team battle don’t happen again. If you doubted the power stored in those blades though pay close attention to this opening hit and you’ll see the far right spiky wedge thing on Gamma 9’s chassis come loose. I’m not too sure what the build quality was on those but whatever the case they must’ve been tacked on with some AliExpress-tier hardware because that thing just comes off in one clean piece without any actual damage to the part itself. Gamma 9 is unfazed by the damage however and keeps on the attack, colliding with Double Dutch a second time. The Gamma bot catches a break this time because Double Dutch’s weapon literally breaks and its upper bar pops off with a fountain of spacers and shaft collars following it. Whatever it was that Double Dutch was trying to achieve by only spinning one weapon at a time clearly did not fucking work. Surprisingly, the robot’s bottom blade is still functional and it whirs to life. I sort of assumed that by virtue of the hardware up top flying off that the bottom blade would also just sort of come loose, but I guess I was wrong about that.

As Double Dutch spins its lower blade and cruises around the robot wobbles and shakes and I don’t know if that’s because something is unstable after the upper blade Challenger’d or if it’s because the robot is just a piece of shit in general. It was doing this in the tag team battle before it touched anybody so my best guess is its blade is like a centimeter too close to the floor and all the times that robots like Tombstone etched their names into the arena have left a bunch of spots for it to catch on and destabilize. Gamma 9 is looking a little worse for wear after this hit and I’m not just talking about how another one of its front prongs has started to come loose. Take a look at how this thing is driving around, either it’s thrown a chain or something worse has happened because it’s a lot stronger on the left than it is on the right. A few seconds later Gamma 9 makes a run at Double Dutch and you can clearly see a drive chain hanging out of its ass so I guess that’s proof that even in BattleBots you can literally get the shit kicked out of you. Strangely though this appears to be the drive chain from its back right wheel which as far as I know hasn’t actually taken any direct shots yet. I’d understand if it were the front right wheel because Double Dutch roundhouse kicked the fuck out of that in the first ten seconds of the battle. It’s not a good sign when you start losing parts from places that aren’t being hit.

Gamma 9 is hurting pretty badly by this point as it fights to simply just drive in a straight line but instead looks like someone stuck in a college lecture room with diarrhea trying not to shit their pants. Double Dutch lands one last weak blow with its lower weapon… and then it falls off because of course it fucking does. We’ve seen this robot three times now and all three times its weapon just falls apart. I’ll give a pass on the Gigabyte battle (because even Gigabyte fucked that one up) but god damn imagine if Hazard did this every time it tried whipping somebody’s ass? We’d be looking at an 0-4 robot, not a 17-1 one that’s for damn sure. Double Dutch is twice as armed as Hazard and about half as dangerous. Impressive. With no PRIMARY WEAPON this is now Gamma 9’s fight to win because from this point onward pretty much anything Double Dutch tries to do is going to cause it to lose points with the judges because the scoring system is retarded. Unfortunately for Gamma 9 it’s too beat up to continue the fight. It tries, and you’ve gotta give it credit for trying, but after crashing into one of the screws its drivetrain seizes up and it concedes its loss to Double Dutch. Maybe next time you guys, I’ve got a good feeling about Gamma 10.

WINNER: Double Dutch, KO

Best YouTube comment on this fight: “Does Double Dutch keep unscrewing it’s own spinners or something?” – Shadow-Scope

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PARALLAX vs. ULTIMO DESTRUCTO
(FIGHT NIGHT ROUND 6)

[This match is available on BattleBots’ official YouTube channel.]

I absolutely love the introductions for this battle especially knowing what we know about these two robots from their first ones. Chronologically this is both Parallax’s and Ultimo Destructo’s second battle after first ones that were, well, absolute fucking disasters to put it politely. Parallax’s team is awfully energetic and peacocky over a robot that in its previous battle barely drove in a straight line and nearly died from a lack of attention. Though, I guess the concept of “Parallax dying when no one is paying it any attention” might be why the team is treating their introduction like this was an episode of WWF Raw or something. This is a robot who has landed zero hits so far. I’m not counting the sparks it ground off of Basilisk during the tag team because that wasn’t really a “hit” so much as a sustained glancing blow. Your boy Draco doesn’t fuck with no “partial credit”. Parallax is armed with a goddamned drum, when you hit something with a drum you damn well know it. I’m not expecting Minotaur levels of destruction out of this thing, but I’d at least anticipate someone getting popped in the air. Sometimes people stumble right out of the gate and fall flat on their ass, but the great thing about the Fight Night format is doing exactly that isn’t an immediate ticket to elimination. Parallax can turn this around, even though we know they wont because this season is already over, haha.

I mentioned WWF Raw while talking about Parallax but I feel like considering Ultimo Destructo is also in the arena I should’ve waited to bring it up until now. Sean Irvin looks like the type of dude who had at least two Undertaker posters hanging up in his bedroom when he was a teenager and I’m also willing to bet that he dressed up as Sting for at least one Halloween. He’s the kind of motherfucker who got put in time out for trying out wrestling moves on the playground because the out of touch principal thought it was a legitimate fight. Also he built a robot that I am fucking convinced was supposed to look like the race car bed you know he had when he was in first grade. I would share a drink with Sean and also bring along my photo album of pictures from Monster Jam shows back when the wrestling trucks were still around because I know he would think it was, and I am preemptively quoting here, “the raddest shit ever”. Ultimo Destructo managed to win its first battle with Valkyrie because Valkyrie suffered a complete and total failure. In a parallel universe Ultimo Destructo forfeited all three of its other Fight Night battles because Valkyrie erased it from history. It’s wearing its flipper attachment for this match because Sean seems clued in to the fact that an upside down Parallax is less effective than a correctly oriented one, and a “correctly oriented Parallax” still poses a threat of exactly nothing.

Parallax has a surprise upper hand at the start of this battle mostly because you can fit three Parallaxes between Ultimo Destructo’s front and rear sets of wheels and the robot has a ground clearance that has to be measured in Shaq’s. The spinner even gets a little nibble on one of Ultimo Destructo’s wheels and messes up its hub. Didn’t pull the wheel off, but that’s a start. As quickly as Parallax jets out of the gate and tries to wrap this one up fast it gives out barely a moment later. Ultimo Destructo closes the distance between the two and immediately starts to stand its ground as Parallax comes back to life and tries to swing wide to catch its opponent. This ends with Ultimo Destructo eventually getting its first flip of the battle and Parallax is heaved onto its backside rendering its wedge design useless. There are some spikes on Parallax’s ass that I guess are meant to serve as a hail mary sort of thing, but they’re too small to be of any use here. Besides, with Ultimo Destructo’s front end just being one massive ramp Parallax’s now-inverted front wedge is the perfect shape to match up to it and get some hits with its embedded drum. That’s sort of what ends up happening, though Ultimo Destructo is quick on its trigger to just keep tossing Parallax aside every time.

And that’s about all Ultimo Destructo seems to be good for now, tossing. For something as long as a semi truck Ultimo Destructo’s flipper seems to only really actuate upward about a foot or less and it doesn’t seem to have the same kick as something like Bronco. That might sound like a really stupid comparison but if you put those two robots together there is a surprising amount of crossover between Ultimo Destructo and Bronco, the difference just being that I guess Xander and Reason had a much cooler race car bed when they were kids. If Bronco is a Hot Wheels, Ultimo Destructo is a Matchbox; objectively the cooler of the two, but kinda cheap. Bronco doesn’t have exposed air lines, for example. That likely has more to do with the fact that Bronco wasn’t designed with the intent of providing the illusion that the robot “goes fast”. I can’t put my finger on why but Ultimo Destructo’s exposed hoses make me think this thing is about to peel out so awesomely that by the time it stops it’ll just be riding on bare metal hubs.

It’s hard to tell exactly who has the advantage in this fight because both robots are sort of meandering about. Parallax is idling around because it’s Parallax, but Ultimo Destructo is actually trying to get things done and it just so happens the robot needs to make a 50-point turn in order to face its opponent. Parallax eventually gets tossed back down right ways up and for some reason this restores most of its mobility. It gets right back to work trying to blindside Ultimo Destructo and what transpires is the literal interpretation of “aiming for the side of a barn and missing”. The spinner eventually gets a fair blow on Ultimo Destructo’s ass but it doesn’t seem to do much of anything other than knock the flipper around. There’s a drive chain laying around on the ground but with the lack of close-ups in these unaired battles it’s hard to tell who it’s from. The fact that both of these robots are driving like they’re intentionally trying to fail a sobriety test doesn’t help.

I’m not sure what Ultimo Destructo’s problem is at this point because right now Parallax is a sitting duck. A duck that appears to be making Atari noises for some reason. Both robots manage to skid and slide all the way across the floor over near the red square and as Ultimo Destructo rides over the Killsaws, Parallax just blows the fuck up. A massive amount of smoke billows out from every single open spot on its chassis, but the robot seems to be just as broken as it was a few seconds prior. I’m guessing judging by the kind of smoke that this was an electronic component of some sort, possibly related to the motor with the missing drive chain (assuming that was Parallax’s). No matter, because even though Ultimo Destructo can’t seem to stay off of the fucking saws it’s probably still going to win this battle simply because it’s NOT the robot that spent a minute upside down and subsequently caught fire internally. Curiously, Ultimo Destructo appears to stop working at the very end of the battle but this happens so late in the game that it winds up being saved by the buzzer and the fight is sent to the judges who score in favor of Ultimo Destructo.

It’s a surprising split decision, but Sean gets his second win and was officially among the competitors who were able to say they were “2-0” half way through their Fight Night rounds. I loved how pissed off people were getting at this and I sincerely wished that the planets would’ve aligned to give Ultimo Destructo a free pass into the esteemed “4-0” club because the salt storm would’ve been biblical. Instead, Witch Doctor wound up destroying Ultimo Destructo so badly that the producers aired the robot’s final two battles out of order.

WINNER: Ultimo Destructo, Judges’ Decision (2-1)

Best YouTube comment on this fight: “With a little more time both these robots could have brought it better than they did for the 2018 season.” – BattleBots, from the video’s description

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DOUBLE DUTCH & BALE SPEAR vs. PETUNIA & PREDATOR
(USA VS. THE WORLD)

[This match is available on BattleBots’ official YouTube channel.]

Oh look who it is here to fuck up my plan to not feature the same robot twice in one article, it’s Double Dutch! Can’t wait to see if all the masking tape its blades are probably wrapped in holds it together this time. I jumped the gun on that though because that was a kneejerk reaction to my perfectly orchestrated article plans falling apart, but to back up a few steps what we have here is yet another tag team fight — bizarrely featuring two of the four robots from the first one — set up in such a way as to be a part of the “USA vs. The World” special. I believe this was probably intended to be a “grand finale” of sorts for that episode because you can sorta see what they were trying to do here: have some one-on-one fights that lead up into an epic four bot slam fest. Obviously, those plans did not work out probably because three of the four robots chosen to be in this battle are fucking terrible and this match was not aired because of it. Double Dutch is here again but because we’ve already seen this robot this week I’m just going to skip it. Its partner, ironically, is Bale Spear. I can only guess that this partnership came about because Bale Spear wanted to be in another rumble but Double Dutch’s driver was all “it took three hours of work to get that asshole’s wheel unstuck from my robot last time and I’m not doing that bullshit again”. Because of this Double Dutch wound up with its unlikely ally.

Over in the blue square representing “The World” to various degrees are Petunia and Predator, another strange partnership because both of those robots have similar weaponry. Also I think Predator is technically from North Carolina, but I mean those fucking states might as well be their own separate countries so who cares I’ll count it. Petunia might’ve been a newcomer this year but I feel like it stood well enough on its own to advance out of the sea of new competitors with indeterminate success. Compared to the other robots in this rumble Petunia sort of sticks out a bit; this is the robot that successfully used the Killsaws to wreck Rotator and also bit down on Captain Shrederator with surgical precision and caused the whole thing to detonate. Petunia has already defeated the United States, in other words. It has nothing to prove, but since its teammate is fucking Predator I guess that puts the burden on Petunia to take the heat to two opponents at the same time because if Predator’s previous battles are any hint this robot is probably going to move about five feet before its canine AIDS kick in and kill it.

I guess this fight isn’t a “tag team” after all unless just absolutely everyone involved does not give any fucks whatsoever. All four competitors spread out like this is a proper 2-v-2 match so since that’s the path we’re apparently going I’m just going to assume that was the intention of the producers all along after what happened the first time they tried to orchestrate a tag team. Bale Spear and Double Dutch separate in order to flank their opponents from both sides. It’s a great strategy, but as luck would have it when it comes time for Double Dutch to finally land its first blow it’s Bale Spear that catches the brunt of it… because of-fucking-course that’s what was going to happen. Did you honestly expect anything different from a partnership of a monster truck and the robotic equivalent of conjoined twins? Although this is a two-on-two fight it seems both sets of fighters have singled out their targets. Petunia looks to be an item with Double Dutch, and Bale Spear is using Predator’s face to clean the mud off of its shoes. The bots all take turns piling up on each other and Bale Spear finally loses the rear tire that Double Dutch inadvertently cleaved into. Bale Spear already handled like one of those “Bumble Ball” toys so even though it’s missing a tire I see no real difference in its maneuverability. Double Dutch on the other hand has either lost the use of its upper blade or is trying to strategically switch to use its bottom one now. I kind of thought the whole point of this robot was to have both blades spinning at the same time, but I guess Kevin Lung finally figured out doing that resulted in his robot causing more damage to itself than its opponents.

This is a battle between a bunch of mostly bad robots but I’ve gotta be honest I’m impressed with the tenacity of some of them. These are sides of Predator and Bale Spear that we never really got to see. Maybe I’m wrong in the case of Bale Spear, because there was that battle with Valkyrie that was off the hook, but certainly Predator. I was expecting that thing to be dead by now for some ambiguous reason. Even more incredible is how Predator’s lifter appears to actually be functional this time! It raises its jaw up and I guess it’s either looking to change targets and go after Double Dutch or maybe get lucky and try to bite Bale Spear’s weapon, because I don’t think there’s anything on Bale Spear for Predator to grab at otherwise. Double Dutch whacks at Petunia for good measure and I believe that’s all the steam it’s got left because afterward neither one of its weapons appear to be functional. After a confusing mess of driving from all parties involved, Petunia finally gets its shot to bite down on Double Dutch and brings it over to the screws a couple of times to impress the judges. While this is going on Bale Spear and Predator have been chasing each other around and almost as if on cue both of them simultaneously die. You guys thought I was kidding about the canine AIDS but Bale Spear has just wound up an unfortunate statistic and a demonstration as to why most major furry conventions offer free HIV screening.

You can see Chris and Kenny watching the fight and to be honest I kind of forgot these guys were even here. They don’t seem like they’re too into this battle and I can’t exactly blame the editors for not paying them for an extra hour of work to re-record some voiceover cuts for it. The dead bots briefly get in the way of the remaining ones but eventually the fight moves over to a less crowded corner of the Battlebox. I say “fight” but I don’t know what else to call it, this one is basically over considering Double Dutch has absolutely no way of doing fucking anything and Petunia’s wedge shape ensures that it’s going to come out ahead in every collision these two robots make. I am completely unsurprised that this battle turned into Petunia vs. Double Dutch, the only thing that genuinely surprised me is that Double Dutch managed to keep both of its weapon bars on. Yeah they quit working, but they stayed on this time. I can’t believe that’s something that I had to compliment, but here we are. The clock runs down on this battle and the judges unanimously call it for Petunia, and I guess Predator too.

WINNERS: Petunia & Predator, Judges’ Decision (3-0)

Best YouTube comment on this fight: “What the hell is Bale Spear even supposed to be?” – Vortex Games

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OVERHAUL vs. VALKYRIE
(EXHIBITION MATCH)

[This match is available on BattleBots’ official YouTube channel.]

In 2015, when BattleBots was just coming back to the airwaves, an MIT student named Charles Guan saw an opportunity to live out one of his lifelong dreams: competing in America’s premiere robot combat event. He assembled a dream team of himself and three other designers and together they brought us Overhaul. And lost. It must’ve been an awkward trip home because the following year Charles came back with his robot and so did his teammates… with their own robots. Like a flash in a pan, Team JACD was no more. Overhaul has continued to compete with its new team under Charles’ guidance and as of this fight over the past two seasons Charles has a win/loss record of 1-6 to show for it. If he didn’t beat Chomp earlier this season his robot would have a record identical to Abbatoir’s and that probably isn’t the sort of “legendary” you want to aspire to. I don’t know how bad the “Overhaul breakup” was but this exhibition “grudge match” pits Overhaul against Valkyrie, a robot whose crew includes former teammate Frederick Moore. I’m guessing Valkyrie was the robot chosen for this battle because Brutus had its face ripped off and shoved straight up its ass in its final bout and Bronco basically reenacted that Looney Tunes gag with Sawblaze where someone gets slapped back and forth on the ground over and over again. Charles is here to show that he’s still the boss and that these other jokers probably wouldn’t even have their opportunities at BattleBots had it not been for him. This one’s for honor. And anime titty.

This is only Valkyrie’s first season on the circuit and it’s already racked up a “kind of” impressive 3-3 record. Again, in one season. Valkyrie achieved this by participating in every single gimmicky opportunity provided to it. It ran its course through 3 of its 4 Fight Night rounds and with a rocky 2-1 record at that point builder Leanne Cushing opted to jump into the Desperado mini bracket to go for a shot at automatic qualification. Obviously we know Valkyrie failed at this, but it finished its Desperado run 1-1 meaning that we’re now up to 3-2. As a latch ditch effort to qualify at the bottom of the pack Valkyrie showed up to the “Last Chance Rumble”, and again obviously we know that this ultimately did not pan out in its favor. 3-3, in one season. Valkyrie’s got nothing to be ashamed of and I can really only commend its team for being able to put this thing through SEVEN fucking battles in one event. There’s nothing on the table except glory in this match and Valkyrie’s already here raring to go. I guess treating every fight like a goddamned job interview has its perks. For this match Valkyrie is wearing its two tooth disc because its bar spinner blew apart and I can’t remember what happened to the six-pointed one.

It appears Overhaul’s team has borrowed the “Surrender Bot” that Huge’s team attempted to confuse Chomp’s NORAD with. Or was that LIDAR? AARP? Fuck it, the optical sensor that tells Chomp’s hammer to swing when something crosses its field of view, whatever that thing is called. It’s clearly intended as a joke and I guess because this is not a regulation battle the officials don’t care that the minibot winds up parked in the middle of the fucking logo on the floor before the fight starts. Overhaul itself is equipped with what I’m guessing is its “Tombstone killer” because anyone with half a brain knows that their robot absolutely needs to have a configuration for things like Ray’s Automatic Slaughterhouse if they want to stand any chance of winning the Nut. You could argue that Valkyrie isn’t a Tombstone-tier shit wrecker, but I feel that Red Devil and Hypothermia would probably disagree with you. Overhaul’s new front wedge serves two purposes: shielding it from spinner attacks and deflecting those same attacks straight up into its weapon jaw. One hit from Valkyrie that gets deflected upwards seems to be enough to ruin Overhaul’s picnic because its upper jaw gets kinked to the side and some of its trademark baby blue parts get torn off. Save bet that thing’s completely trashed now, nice work.

The lower jaw can still lift however, so Overhaul is totally within its power to do the next thing it does which is to lift Valkyrie up and flip it over. Most people at this point might be saying “so why didn’t Overhaul just come in with the lifting prongs only”; chances are those same people also wouldn’t be the type to make their own robot’s paint job an anime waifu. What I’m trying to say is no one understands how the mind of Charles Guan works. Not even me. This dude sold me a taco at Del Taco that he wasn’t going to eat. He sold me a taco in his possession that even in California would’ve only cost me like 60 cents to buy it myself. Dude’s crazy, and I am more than willing to enable that behavior. With that groundwork laid, what happens next in this fight should probably come as no surprise now that Valkyrie is inverted and riding along the point in its front armor. Valkyrie’s disc gets roaring back up to speed and as the robot pivots around the disc catches what’s left of Overhaul’s upper jaw and spikes it at the outer glass of the arena. Aside from a likely very expensive motor flopping down from where the top half of Overhaul’s skull once was, the robot is now correctly configured to properly do battle with Valkyrie. If you don’t believe me just watch a little further and you’ll see Overhaul expertly lift its opponent up and drive it into the wall. No sarcasm either, this is a great play that causes the gyroscopic forces in Valkyrie’s disc to point the entire robot straight up.

Valkyrie in its current state of inversion limbo is probably the most frightening thing I think I’ve ever seen. Imagine this thing coming at you full blast like it is right now. How the fuck do you come at this contraption? Overhaul has absolutely no regard for the integrity of the things inside the arena as it nudges Valkyrie into one of the red-controlled Pulverizers and takes a swing. Had that button been pressed three seconds earlier I swear to god we would’ve seen Valkyrie try to deepthroat a fucking hammer. Instead, Valkyrie just careens into the wall and knocks the cover off of an LED light panel to join the club of robots who’ve broken one of those things (previous inductees include Son of Whyachi and, surprisingly, Chrome Fly). As Valkyrie slowly starts to descend downward into its normal state its disc catches one of the slightly ajar forks of Overhaul. The hit violently throws Overhaul into the center of the arena while Valkyrie spins out of control in the opposite direction and smashes into the wall. The cameras cut while this happens but if you watch closely in the ensuing chaos you’ll see a couple of sprockets and other things I’m professionally determining to be “important shit” erupt out of somewhere which means that someone’s going to be having a rough time in a few seconds when the realize they’re missing parts. Also the minibot is dead.

Astoundingly, both of these robots are still functional. Mostly. Overhaul’s weaponry appears to be completely shot and you can see Valkyrie’s disc trying to spin up but failing to achieve anything better than what we saw when it fought (and lost) to Ultimo Destructo. The bots fidget around each other for a few seconds until at the same time both of them appear to lose drive power on one side. They manage to skid around and bump into each other a couple of times, but I guess the referees don’t want to stand there and watch a whole minute of this so they count out both of the robots simultaneously and turn this three minute fight into a two minute one and send it to the judges (as is the case with fights ruled to be a “double KO”). The verdict doesn’t get filmed, but Valkyrie is declared the winner. I’ve gotta say for as shitty of a solo career as “Overhaul featuring Charles Guan And That’s It” has had… he clearly won this fight, especially if it was ruled a double KO and required the verdict of the judges. Despite taking a ton of damage, Overhaul controlled the fight and brought Valkyrie into the wall and a hazard which resulted in Valkyrie ultimately breaking down. When the match turned into a cripple fight it was Overhaul who was still maneuverable enough to get over to its opponent and at least try to land a hit. I don’t know, I’m not a judge but I think my taco hook-up homie got shafted on this one.

WINNER: Valkyrie, Judges’ Decision

Best YouTube comment on this fight: “Valkyrie transforms into Wrecks.” – Smart but Useless

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CHOMP vs. BASILISK
(EXHIBITION MATCH)

[This match is available on BattleBots’ official YouTube channel.]

Now that we’re at the last unaired fight of the season you can kind of see why I got a little bit buttmad about Double Dutch being in this post twice. Orchestrating a split in the articles where no two robots were duplicated was pretty hard considering both of the bots in this fight had their own separate battles that were covered last week which naturally meant this one wouldn’t have been there. I guess I just overlooked the Canadian Lumberjack. I don’t know if the Double Dutch guy is Canadian or not, I’m just going to say that anyways because it’s amusing. Chomp was in last week’s article and in its fight with Kraken we got to see Chomp take its moral victory on principle so Zoe Stephenson could at least say that she did win a fight this year. It came at the expense of beating the shit out of a robot that I feel like even Overhaul could’ve beaten, but a win is still a win. Faruq introduces Chomp as “Tooth Bader Ginsburg”, a pun on U.S. Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That’s a funny joke mostly because Chomp was dead on arrival this year. Anyways, here to liberally apply the (pneumatic) hammer of justice in the final BattleBots match of the 2018 season it’s the only fire-breathing turtle I know: Chomp.

In the previous paragraph I joked about Double Dutch being Canadian but I’m certain Basilisk is from Canada. It’s not because Lucas Sloan and his teammate show off the Canadian flags on their shirts, either. It’s because Basilisk never wins any fights. Yeah, I’m aware that Basilisk technically won half of a WINNER medallion last week in that god awful “tag team” match but my judgment officially supersedes that of the BattleBots judges and I’m retroactively declaring that fight to have no winners whatsoever on the grounds of actually needing to have a fucking fight first before anyone can be deemed a “winner”. As soon as I publish this article I will wage an edit war on the BattleBots fan wiki until the record is set straight. I don’t know what to tell you about Basilisk other than I hate it and it never works and it’s basically the world’s largest gaming mouse. I think this thing intentionally only works “sometimes”. It has a flipper that’s perfectly capable of tossing someone over but like hell are we ever going to see that thing used in an actively aggressive manner. There’s also apparently a flamethrower tucked inside of Basilisk’s front meaning it’s kind of like an inverse Chomp with its weapon arrangement but I’m still not certain if I just hallucinated the flames that I thought I saw come out of this thing last week.

Chomp has a flamethrower too and that one works because we get about fifteen seconds of solid fire being blown around which for some reason successfully discourages Basilisk from moving. It’s like a fucking wild animal or something with the way it’s paralyzed in fear over mankind’s mastery over burning shit. Chomp swings its hammer once and immediately I start to think something is wrong, maybe Chomp and Basilisk swapped pneumatic systems as a fun prank. But no, Chomp swings again with a little more muscle and dents in part of the front panel of Basilisk’s flipper which proves to us that whether you’ve got a point (Chomp) or a blunt surface (Blacksmith) if you whack Basilisk you’ll probably break something. Chomp just lays on the trigger with its flamethrower and lines up another swing of its hammer presumably to try and disable all the fucking green LED’s stuffed up its opponent’s ass. Basilisk blinks red for a brief moment because the goddamned Atari 2600 running this piece of shit finally just now noticed it was whacked with something. Basilisk is steering like it’s already broken and I can’t think of any legitimate reason as to why unless Chomp really did break something important with its violent flailing.

…and it’s only going to get worse for Basilisk because like I said last week Chomp was absolutely humiliated in the Fight Night rounds and Zoe is looking to make up for all the missed shots and lost battles she had to put up with this year. Basilisk is an even easier target than Kraken because at least Kraken fucking moves. Basilisk is fucked, or at least it should be… because Chomp swings, misses, and rolls onto its side and appears to get stuck this way. Chomp rocks around and tries to swing its pick but succeeds in merely writhing about for a few moments. Meanwhile Basilisk puts its goddamned turn signal on or something so it can cruise on over to Chomp and proceed to not do anything. It has a flamethrower, it can be using it right this very fucking minute to score some points but fuck me this is the only robot that puts actual effort into not wanting to ever win a battle even when a win is now being handed to it on a silver fucking platter. Basilisk is so bad at what it does that any time it tries to watch porn it breaks reality and the actors in the video put their clothes back on and leave.

The referees are literally hesitant to count Chomp out. This fight could have ended at least three times by this point and instead the ref for Chomp’s side is suggesting to Basilisk’s driver that he just bumps into Chomp to see if anything happens, i.e. “dislodging whatever is stuck so Chomp can get back on its wheels and pulverize your robot”. Lucas knows better than this and he tells the officials he’s not going to do it. He’s won this fight fair and square. He didn’t do a goddamned thing, but he IS right. The ref finally starts to count Chomp out and this is when Basilisk decides to ram into it. That’s an incredibly ballsy “fuck you” to throw out there, dude. But I’ve gotta say I almost can’t blame the guy because I shit you not the ref mentally counts down “two and three-quarters, two and a half, etc” before he gets to verbally saying “one” and ruling Chomp to be immobilized nearly 100 fucking seconds after it rolled itself over and stopped working. I know this is just an exhibition match and there’s nothing on the line here, but good god was that amazingly shameless. Also it’s now just sinking in that we’re all done with season 8 and the note that I decided to end things on was Basilisk winning a fight. Man, that sucks.

WINNER: Basilisk, KO

Best YouTube comment on this fight: “The bots definitely lived up to the intros.” – DeadlyDeadleth

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And… that’s it. That’s every fight that took place in the 2018 season accounted for and cataloged here on The Update. But there’s still a little bit more season 8 content to get into in the form of the popular Giant Washer Awards. I don’t always do them for other shows or events (in fact, they are unique to BattleBots only for some reason) but I will be putting one together for this season. I don’t know if it’ll have a turnaround of a week or what but my personal goal is to finish this season’s content BEFORE taping of the 2019 season (“season 9”) begins in April. I think that is a perfectly do-able goal and who knows if things go well I might even be able to get to those two missing Robot Wars episodes from series 10 before the taping too, but I know better than to make lofty promises anymore. I wish I counted all of the fights but I didn’t, and I’ve already reset the counters on the homepage in preparation of the new season so… yeah, dropped the ball on that factoid for you. But in any case, thank you for taking this journey with me — there’s one more 2018 article to explore and I would like to make sure I do it right so I’ll be watching the whole season again (all 20 episodes) and taking better notes because I can’t remember what some of the notes I wrote a year ago even mean anymore. Getting older sucks.

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– Draco