Giant Washer Awards: BattleBots S6

[Editor’s Note: This article was originally written in the week immediately following the final episode of BattleBots’ 2015 ABC season. A personal emergency prevented this article from being fully completed, as well as additional content to be written and posted here as well. I apologize for the profound delay in finishing this article.]

Just because the televised episodes of BattleBots’ sixth season are over and the Giant Nut has been claimed doesn’t mean that it’s time for us to just pack it up and call it a day here at The Update. Yes, I have some other pressing matters to tend to in my personal life, but there’s still a lot of juice left in these batteries. The support this website received during season six was phenomenal; needless to say, BattleBots Update 1.0 didn’t make it this far. Thank you all so very much for making this website a hot spot in the field of robot combat; I might lack the financial lenience to be able to compete in the big leagues, but it’s nice to know that I’m still considered a part of the family.

This might come as a shocker to you, but here at The Update we have our own awards to give out. BattleBots has already laid claim to the Giant Nut, and the “Giant Screw” is already a popular robot combat in-joke… and I’m pretty sure the bolt has got to have been taken by someone, and the “C” clamp has also been taken for some odd reason. Point is, there’s not a whole lot of hardware left to pick from so we had to try and make do with what hadn’t been claimed yet. We settled on the washer. Fuck it, let’s do this.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you without any further adieu, BattleBots Update’s first ever “Giant Washer Awards”. There’s a lot of them. Like, thirty or something.

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BEST ROBOT

Molly McGrath

In order to keep the riff-raff watching, ABC needed an attractive lady with a BMI of 0 who could recite cue cards and look at a camera. That’s exactly what they got with Molly McGrath. At the end of the article for the very first episode of the reboot I expressed disdain for her presence in the show mostly because she doesn’t really “do” anything. I mean sure, she welcomes viewers to the show and all that but besides being a pretty face for the sake of “this is a TV show in 2016” everything she says and does could easily be absorbed by the other two commentators. Like I’ve already pointed out, her being there results in awkward moments where one of the three people on screen aren’t talking and are just glancing around like an idiot waiting for their turn to interject and tell us how Radioactive is totally going to be able to come out against Tombstone or whatever.

Disney runs ABC. Disney also runs ESPN, the sports network. ESPN has shows where tables of more than two people discuss or debate footage of grown men playing with balls. While stupid, there’s a formula for this type of “sports banter” and as for why Disney didn’t just carbon copy it into BattleBots is beyond me. I guess this is because BattleBots is on at primetime and every show on every network in that time slot features some pretty lady staring the viewer down? Who fucking knows anyways Molly is a robot here’s your award. I’d say better luck next time but knowing BattleBots‘ track record with female hosts Molly will probably be replaced with some other “pretty actress who’s slightly aged and can’t get roles in shows that don’t have ‘Cougar’ in their title”.

BEST DISAPPEARING ACT

“Douchebag Hair”

Do you remember this guy’s name? I sure as hell don’t. This is the guy who tagged along with the post-fight interviewer during the “In the Pits” segment of the first episode. As far as I know, this is the only time he made an appearance this season. I remember him only by the name I bestowed upon the unfortunate mess on his head, Douchebag Hair. I hope the likely six-figure paycheck that ABC wrote this joker was worth it.

(His name is actually Bobak Ferdowsi and he’s the “technical correspondent” whose role was to replace Bill Nye this season. A grand total of zero of his robot breakdowns were aired on TV, but they were released on YouTube. Here’s one where he uses the term “gently caress” to describe the weapon of season six champ Bite Force. For those not in the know “gently caress” is a frequent stand-in phrase for the verb form of “fuck”, a gimmick made popular by the website Something Awful.)

BEST METH MOUTH

Captain Shrederator

While this patriotic hero may have fallen while protecting our freedoms in the line of duty, Captain Shrederator receives this posthumous Giant Washer award for losing more teeth in its match against Stinger than a meth head on a ringer that’d make even the writers of Requiem for a Dream cringe. The battle wasn’t exciting enough to make it to TV, but much like Bobo Ferdobo’s robot breakdowns the battle was uploaded to the official BattleBots YouTube channel. During the match Captain Shrederator lands some big hits on Stinger (none of which it initiated), but pay attention to the moment where the spinner gets ricocheted into the corner of the BattleBox. All that shrapnel you see fly everywhere isn’t part of the arena, it’s Shrederator’s fucking teeth.

After being knocked out, Shrederator leaves the arena looking like that one game they had at Chuck E. Cheese’s where you use that pneumatic cannon to fire Skee-balls into that purple guy’s mouth to knock out his teeth. I know his name’s not Grimace but whatever, you get what I’m talking about. I’m not about to Google that because I know I’ll just find gross furry porn instead of the thing I’m actually looking for.

BEST REJECTION OF A HAND-BASED AFFIRMATION

Radioactive

In the middle of the second episode of the season, after Complete Control pulled that bullshit with the fishing net, the editors decided to cut to some coverage of the four qualification round fights that didn’t make it to TV. One such fight was Radioactive versus Sweet Revenge, a match between two shit-tier robots where Radioactive was somehow the least worst robot in the field. Despite winning this match by a 3-0 judges’ decision Radioactive still ended up being seeded 16th. Like I said, even when it’s winning Radioactive still fucks everything up.

But let’s get to the meat of this award, a spectacular shot of the team giving each other high fives to celebrate beating a bunch of elementary school girls wherein the team captain of Make Robotics leaves one of his buddies hanging. I might be a total dick to everybody on this website, but holy shit the editors of BattleBots should get their own Giant Washer award for being the biggest assholes in the history of the show. Everyone’s missed a high five in their lifetime, but you don’t show that on TV, man. And you definitely don’t show the awkward half-chuckle that the guy does when he slowly puts his hand down and tries to laugh it off. Not cool.

Now let’s all point and laugh and send this clip to Cringe Channel.

BEST PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE COMMENT

Reason Bradley

My favorite moment of episode five was the brief shot of Inertia Labs’ Reason Bradley talking about their victory over Plan X in the Round of 16. Specifically, in my coverage I pointed out how hilarious it was to see Reason literally just make this shit up on the spot about “dragon wings” and use this mixture of blatant apathy and utter confusion to dismiss the gimmick bot that was its most recent casualty. It was so hilarious to me that for the “wacky end of the article picture” for episode five I threw together some bizarre graphic of Reason oogling a sultry dragon with the phrase “dragon wings” superimposed on it in Comic Sans.

Inertia Labs saw this picture, and they told me it was funny. I literally put pornography onto a screengrab of Reason making a stupid face and those people told me it was funny. I can basically get away with whatever I want.

BEST EFFORT BY A ROBOT WITH “OVER” IN ITS NAME

Counter Revolution

Let’s think outside of the box for this one. Sure, you might be expecting to see Overhaul or Overdrive, but Counter Revolution snatches this award on technicality; if you spell “revoluton” backwards the word “over” appears. Counter Revolution, a robot with what has got to be the stupidest fucking weapon array I’ve ever seen, bravely entered the ring to fight Tombstone knowing full well it was going to die. Coming in with dual weapons (one of which guaranteed to not be pointing at its opponent, ever) Counter Revolution missed its only opportunity to strike Tombstone at a perpendicular angle and opposite to the direction it was spinning, a mistake it paid for with its life. Parts were ejected from the holes ripped in this robot’s sides that have yet to be identified.

BEST INCORRECT TROLL COMMENT ON A SNARK BLOG

NightSpectre

Troll/flame comments are a dime a dozen. It doesn’t matter what kind of blog you have, someone who thinks they know more than you will show up, try to point out how you are wrong, be wrong themselves in the process, and promptly die as they inhale the torrential storm of spaghetti they summon. Episode four of this season saw Overhaul rematching Lock-Jaw, because ratings. During this match Lock-Jaw spontaneously sharted out flames in Overdrive’s face. Since this hadn’t yet happened before on camera, I acted surprised and was like “whoa what the hell is this, this is craaaaAAAAaaazy” knowing ahead of time that Lock-Jaw was packing flamethrowers, since its page on the official BattleBots site says so.

Enter NightSpectre whose debut comment on the episode four article on BattleBots Update consisted of the following:

“Um, might want to dome [sic] some research next time. Overhaul is the one with the flamethrower.”

Dude, nice!

BEST RESERVE ROBOT

Swamp Thing

If you’re just casually a fan of BattleBots you probably don’t know who Swamp Thing is in the context of robot combat. If that’s the case, let me be the first to introduce to you a robot whose design is literally “a giant snake with lights that spits fire“. If your reaction to that is “holy shit Draco why wasn’t that on fucking TV” then all I have to say is “I know, right?” Swamp Thing was a fantastic piece of machinery and the fact that the producers allowed total garbage to compete in its place is kind of upsetting. What’re the other robots packing that Swamp Thing doesn’t? If it’s the female driver thing, just put Ray in a fucking wig. He’d pass.

The truth is, Swamp Thing was an extra robot that Ray Billings of Team Hardcore Robotics (Tombstone) brought to BattleBots just in case there was a bad turnout or if a team dropped at the last minute. Since nobody did that — and because I guess one guy can’t have two robots at the same time — Swamp Thing was delegated to pit duty where it sat on a table for the duration of filming.

Swamp Thing gets the last laugh, however, because it was one of two robots to be the first to “test” the new BattleBox before taping for the event officially started. So maybe that means they actually had the first laugh instead of the last one. Idioms are dumb.

BEST SPAGHETTI

Ghost Raptor

“…we’re gonna go, we’re gonna fight again, and it’s gonna hurt this time,” Chuck Pitzer says as he awkwardly flaunts his bravado to that post-fight interviewer girl whose name I didn’t commit to memory. This exchange of words happened immediately following Complete Control’s stunt where it disabled Ghost Raptor’s weapon with a fishing net. Rather than disqualify Complete Control it was decided that the fight would instead start from a clean slate, sans net.

Chris Rose chimes in with “He looks angry, he looks upset, and this time I think he wants blood” as the robots are brought back into the arena. Tensions are high, Chuck is pissed off, the buzzer sounds to start the match… and all hell breaks loose. Complete Control runs into a seam on the floor and fucks up its drivetrain, then Ghost Raptor follows up by breaking its weapon in the only hit it lands during the match. Both are exemplary demonstrations of perfect spaghetti but we only have one Giant Washer to give out, and that award goes to Ghost Raptor simply due to how much everyone played up and expected there to be a blood bath when at best we got a sitz bath.

BEST ADVOCATE FOR TOAST CONDIMENTS

Kenny Florian

Kenny Florian loves him some fucking jam. It’s his favorite thing to put on toast. It’s his favorite Michael Jackson song. It’s his favorite word in the title of a movie about space basketball starring Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan. It’s also his favorite part of a door. That last example has a silent “b” in it but Kenny doesn’t give a shit. Jam is jam.

Without fail, this man used the term “jam up” in some form at least once in every single episode of BattleBots’ sixth season. Sure, when you’re talking about something as specific as a spinning weapon it can get difficult to come up with different ways to explain the same battle strategy over and over again. That’s kind of your job as a commentator, though, and when you keep saying something as distinctive as “jam up” people are going to take note of it. /r/battlebots on Reddit made a meme out of the phrase. That’s what you’re going to be remembered for, dude. Congratulations.

BEST PIZZA HUT COMMERCIAL

Chomp vs. Icewave

I’ve gotta be honest here, I don’t remember what the joke I was trying to write here used to be when I started this article six months ago. The ridiculous Pizza Hut commercial that aired during BattleBots’ first episode featured grown-ass men fighting over a pepperoni pizza whose crust was made of hot dogs. That is without a doubt the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever written in my entire life.

But I don’t remember how that was being linked into Chomp’s battle against Icewave. Clearly the anti-joke here is that maybe this was “the best pizza commercial” because Icewave was taking a “slice” from Chomp. Or maybe the joke was “chomp” as in “chomp on some pizza”. One thing’s for certain however, a pepperoni pizza whose crust is made out of hot dogs would’ve stood a better chance against Icewave.

BEST ROBOT FROM A SCHOOL ATTENDED BY A CUTE GUY I LIKE BUT CAN’T DATE BECAUSE HE’S ALREADY TAKEN

Overhaul

Seriously, you know who you are. It’s killing me, man. I swear to god I thought you were on the market and we got along so goddamned well.

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[Editor’s Note: This section has been removed from the article because this is my website and this joke wasn’t funny.]

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Also I guess Overhaul wins this award. Here. Fuck you.

BEST FEDORA

SoyDivisionIV

I take responsibility for the fact that not everyone immediately “gets” the act on display here at BattleBots Update. I say some things that sound pretty awful if you’re not in the proper mindset to read this website as purely satirical, and I can empathize with people who might get a bit jostled at what gets published here. What I can’t take responsibility for, however, is what these people choose to do with said offense.

SoyDivisionIV acknowledged the existence of BattleBots Update only once on Reddit, but in his sole comment he took a standoffish opinion against the website based upon a perceived “sexist perspective”. Oh, golly. It’s tricky to pinpoint Soy’s actual school of thought, but his comment about The Update was one of two that took a defensive stance against perceived sexism in the contest toward its women competitors. For this, SoyDivisionIV wins the BattleBots Update award for Best Fedora, I’m sure it will go great with your My Little Pony vape and your collection of anime swords.

Also, it is worth pointing out that me ragging on Chomp as proof of “sexism” is pretty groundless. One, Chomp sucked; and two, here’s a list of every other “sexist” gesture made on BattleBots Update during the first three episodes of season six that Soy completely ignored:

• Always referring to Molly McGrath as “Pretty (Color) Dress Lady”
• Calling the female post-fight correspondent “Tits Microphone”
• Making fun of Lisa Winter’s robot Plan X
• Saying we “dodged a PSA” with the all-girl Sweet Revenge team not making it to TV
• Blaming “Carmen Electra’s breasts” as the reason for the Comedy Central cancellation
• Literally titling Witch Doctor’s driver spot “Women In Tech, We Get It”

We get it dude, you think Chomp’s driver is cute and you want her to notice you. Best of luck with that, man.

BEST GIANT NUT

Chris Rose

There is not a single thing that came out of Chris Rose’s mouth that was funny, insightful, or meaningful in any way, shape, or form. This is the guy who talked himself into a cringe corner by botching Matt Maxton’s builder bio and accidentally painted the competitor as a knuckledragging retard. Chris is also the commentator whose referential jokes either consisted of obscure sports references or were just painfully plain to begin with (“third time you get a prize at the carnival”). This guy’s only saving grace is that Kenny was the one who kept saying “jam up” and “Icewave’s weapon is made of gas”. Chris is like Bil Dwyer minus all the jokes. So in that regard he’s exactly like Bil Dwyer.

To Chris’ credit, he was apparently the former host of ESPN’s Best Damn Sports Show Period for something like eight years. I guess jokes about carnival prizes is what passes for kosher coverage over there. No wonder Cheap Seats got cancelled; the fucking Sklar Brothers are Shakespearean in comparison.

BEST RETIRED ROBOT

Breaker Box (Team Nightmare)

Team Nightmare, builders of the legendary robot of the same name, continued to compete in robot combat events after the demise of the original BattleBots in 2003. Unfortunately, they continued to do so with Breaker Box, a boring-ass wedge with a lifting scoop. Yeah, I get it, it’s a solid competitor and the robot is stupidly powerful and it can split atoms with the spike on its plow or something, whatever. My gripe is that you can’t go from “iconic robot with a massive spinning weapon” to “something the author of this website would build but fuck it all up in the process”.

I’m so glad Nightmare returned to BattleBots, because without “Nightmare” all you have is just “Team”. And you know what? That anecdote doesn’t make any goddamned sense, but neither did Breaker Box.

BEST DEREK YOUNG IMPRESSION

Donald Hutson

You might see the name Derek Young and go “oh yeah he’s the Complete Control guy”. While you’re not incorrect, to a lot of people Derek is “the Pressure Drop guy”, Pressure Drop being the name of his middleweight robot from season one who famously took a pot shot at a disabled opponent about six seconds after the buzzer.

Donald Hutson of Team Mutant Robots fame was there for that particular cheap shot, and you’d think he’d take note of that or at least keep it in the back of his mind that you probably shouldn’t hit your opponent when the fight is over. Nope, using his new robot Lock-Jaw, Donald landed a late hit on Overhaul and then spent an unknown amount of time dragging it around presumably to get the two robots separated. It’s hard to tell how long after the buzzer it went on since a raw cut of the fight isn’t available and the producers milked the shit out of it for easy ratings. Yay television.

MOST LETHARGIC MINI-BOT

Plan X

“Multibots”, competiors that consist of multiple robots fighting as a group, have been an underground tactic in robot combat since virtually the inception of the sport. Minibots, as the smaller components are often called, have been used in every single weight class from 1 pound to 320 pounds, usually with little success, and for some fucking reason a whopping three competitors at this season of BattleBots made use of them. When it comes to shitty minibots though, you need to look no further than the Robot Action League. Many of their robots employed the use of miniature robots, but it’s the ones that tagged along with Plan X that take this award home.

Plan X, as you might recall, actually won its first battle against Wrecks. This is because its opponent was Wrecks, not because Plan X is some undefeatable machine. During this fight Plan X’s minibots did fuck all and when Lisa Winter got stuck on a piece of her own robot and called for help she got only one of two minibots to come to her rescue. When Plan X advanced onward to face off against Bronco the minibots just straight up left and weren’t even in the arena. Warrior Clan’s minibots also left, but that’s because Nightmare literally disintegrated them. I like to believe Plan X’s buddies jumped ship out of profound apathy.

MOST LIKELY TO BEAT TOMBSTONE

Bronco

We probably should have given this award out before season six instead of after it. Uh, congrats Bronco? Sorry it didn’t work out for you?

MOST AWKWARD TEAM PHOTO

Radioactive

God damn.

MOST UNEXPECTED FIGHT INTERRUPTION

The Hellraisers

In the early days of BattleBots’ TV career there were ramps hidden in the arena floor called “Hellraisers”. Their intended purpose was to disorient the robots, but they never quite worked that well; robots would often instead get stuck in the mechanics of the Hellraisers which depending upon the situation would result in either a knock out loss or require the intervention of the BattleBots safety crew to free the robots. The Hellraisers were generally seen as being more trouble than they were worth and were retired after season three in 2002.

You can imagine my surprise 13 years later when right in the middle of the fight between Overhaul and Bite Force a fucking ramp just pops up out of the arena like it ain’t no thang. Instead of show any kind of hype, the commentators are just “oh yeah there’s hazards lol”. Nobody said a fucking word about the Hellraisers at all; when we were introduced to the arena hazards we were shown the Pulverizers, Killsaws, and Screws. Is anybody else as wound up about this as me?

Actually, come to think of it Chris Rose mentioned “Hellraisers” in one episode. He used that term to describe the Ramrod hazards because he’s a doofus.

MOST OUT OF PLACE CHILD

Warrior Clan

Seriously. Does anyone know what’s up with this kid? He’s sitting on top of Warrior Clan in the robot’s team photo but he doesn’t look like he belongs there. The people around him are dressed up like they’re going to a NASCAR LARP and he’s just chillin’ like he got picked up from elementary school and wants to go home and watch the newest episode of Spongebob Squarepants.

I mean, he’s probably someone’s kid. Or maybe he’s the inventor of the famed “Udder Gun” referenced on Warrior Clan’s page on BattleBots.com, a livestock cleaning tool whose product description literally includes the term “teat belt”.

MOST INCORRECT INTERPRETATION OF A DINOSAUR

Ghost Raptor

Sabertooth cat.

WORST ROCKET SCIENTIST

Korey Kline

Before he was the team captain for the robot Mohawk — you know, the robot that lost in 38 seconds and whose fight recap had to be shown in slow motion so the commentators could finish their goddamned sentence about it — Korey Kline was a member of Team Loki, a BattleBots team whose repertoire includes robots such as Surgeon General, Rammstein, Turbo, Buddy Lee Don’t Play In The Street, and Korey Kline’s pride and joy Trimangle. I’ll let you figure out what all those videos have in common.

Korey’s robots aren’t the worst things in the world (they win sometimes), but you’d think someone who is literally a rocket scientist would be able to assist with the construction of a robot that doesn’t die in thirty-fucking-eight seconds. People always say “it ain’t rocket science” when something is easy, well here’s your fucking guy! Korey couldn’t even keep his Guinness world record for highest ameteur rocket altitude, he lost that title to Team Rocket who, after hundreds of episodes of Pokémon, finally “blasted off again” and took the record with them. Great job, Korey.

WORST FURSUIT

Bull Dog

Dude, seriously. This is some haggard-looking shit right here.

Bull Dog, a UK competitor, didn’t make it to the TV rounds which is unfortunate because I’m sure it would’ve caught fire at some point because flamethrowers are the fad weapon of the decade. Had that happened I would’ve been able to make all sorts of “yiff in hell furfag” jokes and talk about the Burned Furs and how hilariously impotent and homophobic they were and it would’ve all just been a grand ol’ time. Really.

Also here’s some food for thought, Bull Dog was built by the Bigger Brother team. Personally, I didn’t see anything wrong with Bigger Brother and fail to see how gussying it up with a cut rate fursuit does anything but turn the robot into “Shitty Diotoir”.

LONGEST GAP BETWEEN FORFEIT LOSSES

BETA

13 years ago I fondly recall browsing the Team Nightmare website in my school’s computer lab to gawk at pictures all of the competitors at BattleBots’ fifth season. I eagerly looked for my favorites and when it came time to find Killerhurtz I was sadly let down when the robot was nowhere to be found. I discovered instead that Team Hurtz had brought a new robot, “Beta”, to the event. Beta looked like Killerhurtz on steroids, but when it came time for the TV rounds the robot was nowhere to be found. Turns out Beta lost by a forfeit and never competed.

A lot has happened in that time, and a few months ago I found myself poring over photos of BattleBots competitors once again, imagining all the fights that could happen before the show debuted on TV. So many familiar faces were here again! Nightmare, Complete Control, Team Mutant Robots… and Beta. Would this finally be the moment where I got to see Beta’s famed hammer in the arena?

Hell no, haha. Beta lost by forfeit once again, this time because their airline fucked them over and lost some of their parts on their way to the event. The universe itself doesn’t want you to win, Beta. See you in 2028.

DIVERSITY AWARD

Wrecks

It’s 2016 and that means that in order for us to come off as a legitimate source of information and entertainment we here at BattleBots Update have to pander to the far left and put a spotlight on someone crippl– uh, “differently abled” and celebrate their accomplishments. Nothing makes the guy in the wheelchair feel like he fits in quite like praising him in a completely non-belittling manner for being able to do something that us walkies take for granted.

That’s why the BattleBots Update Diversity Award goes to Wrecks. In a contest full of nimble wheeled and tracked robots, Wrecks was there to teach us important lessons in diversity as it writhed and contorted around the arena like a mortally injured man trying to escape from the wreckage of a burning car accident. Though it may have lost its only match against Plan X — and didn’t receive a wildcard because its gimmick was hilariously shitty — we tip our hats and applaud the ferocious paraplegic dinosaur. Next time try crutches.

BUILDER MOST LIKELY TO SHARE SCREENNAME WITH A PORN STAR

Ray Billings

Ray’s screenname is “Hardcore Ray” as in Hardcore Robotics, his robot team. I can think of something else that the adjective “hardcore” commonly describes. Let’s just be thankful Ray’s name isn’t Max.

WEIGHT LOSS ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
(sponsored by NutriSystem)

Razorback

Who needs to exercise and count calories when you can just eat food-like products made from cardboard and yard mulch? That’s what Nutrisystem’s all about, so buy their “food” because they paid me a ton of money to plug their product in this article and devote an entire award to this bullshit.

On behalf of Nutrisystem we’d like to applaud Zach Bieber’s robot Razorback for losing the most weight during its run for the Giant Nut. The pounds just shed right off in its match against Icewave where Razorback dropped at least 30 to 40 pounds in seconds by having its face and part of its drive system completely ripped apart. You look fantastic Razorback, and we hope you’re excited to be able to fit into your skinny jeans again!

PHIL FISH
INDIE GAME HIPSTER DOUCHEBAG BEARD AWARD

Team Mission Destruction

Phil Fish is a deplorable man with an even more deplorable face, a situation which is worsened further by the presence of his “indie game hipster douchebag beard”. Play your cards carefully if you find yourself in this situation, and know that you are perpetually one fuck up away from adding “DJ” to your name and hitting shuffle on your iPod at some bullshit social gathering.

There was a lot of facial hair to judge at this season of BattleBots, but we feel Team Mission Destruction of Complete Control fame took this one by a landslide. Not only were three of the five people on this team sporting the famed indie douchebag beard but one of them was there simply to hold up a disco ball on a boom. It doesn’t get much worse than that, people. At this point all Mission Destruction needs is a Patreon account and they’ll end up with the “lifetime achievement” version of this award next year.

TEAM LOKI
“THIS SHIT DON’T WORK” AWARD

Sweet Revenge

Remember Korey Kline? We talked about him a little while ago. He is/was a part of Team Loki, a BattleBots team notorious for, well, shit that don’t work. The award bearing their namesake is all about unreliable construction, awful design, and just bad robots overall.

Sweet Revenge wins this award because it lost to Radioactive. Not only that, it lost by a unanimous judges’ decision. The reason for this loss is because Sweet Revenge’s weapon, a horizontal spinning bar (think Tombstone), just straight up didn’t fucking work. In fact, if you roll what little fight footage made it to TV you can see that at best Sweet Revenge’s weapon made maybe four complete rotations before getting stopped by Radioactive and breaking immediately.

You may also be amused to hear that Nola Garcia, the captain of Sweet Revenge’s team, is — wait for it — Team Loki alumni. Way to win your own award.

DALE EARNHARDT
“RACE HARD, CRASH HARDER” AWARD

Stinger

If there was ever a robot that truly treated the BattleBox like its own personal demolition derby, it’s Stinger. Matt Maxton’s six-wheeled wrecking machine has thrown more punches than a high school bully with a tiny dick and has gone through more tires than the time the Mythbusters tested the myth that burning one summons Al Gore to talk about climate change. Stinger’s strategy of “beat them until they die and then keep beating them because it makes for good television” led the robot to back to back victories over Captain Shrederator and Warhead, two robots who were famously destructive in their BattleBots heydays. Then, against Bronco, Stinger went toe to toe with its equal and got thrown head over tail and out of the actual goddamned arena where Stinger proceeded to fucking explode. If I didn’t know any better I’d think this was Twisted Metal.

Dale sends his regards, Stinger. Great show.

DUKE NUKEM’S
“BALLS OF STEEL” LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Shaman

Let God sort ’em out.
– Duke Nukem

To be a true badass you gotta have balls, big balls. Balls of steel. Don’t take “no” for an answer, shoot first and ask questions later, and fuck every poster on every wall until you find the secret compartment with the chaingun in it.

No other robot took this mantra to heart more than Shaman, Witch Doctor’s flame-spitting companion. Weighing in at a measly 30 pounds, this little shit fought like it was an actual heavyweight. Shaman rammed and drove into robots literally eight times heavier than it without breaking a sweat. Remember that line from Tommy Boy about how “you can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking your head up a bull’s ass, but wouldn’t you want to take a butcher’s word for it instead”? Shaman said “fuck the butcher” and stuck its head up Bronco’s ass and let loose a mixtape that’s gone unrivaled to this very day.

Shaman didn’t make it through the whole tournament but you can rest easy tonight knowing that while robots don’t normally make it to Valhalla, they made a special exception for this one.

“IRON SPHINCTER” ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Witch Doctor

It’s one thing to talk the talk, but when it came time to step up to the plate Witch Doctor armored up and plowed face-fucking-first into Tombstone’s weapon. Radioactive and Counter Revolution died after a single hit each. Bronco made it to five hits. Witch Doctor? Seven. Seven fucking hits, and the only reason why Witch Doctor was knocked out was because its wheels weren’t on the ground anymore. If the robot was invertible or could self-right in its armored form, Tombstone would’ve been shit out of luck. As it stands however, it’s the robot who stood up to the most punishment without breaking down, and that my friends is a true “Iron Sphincter”.

LEAST TIMELY BATTLEBOTS UPDATE WEBMASTER

Draco

And the final Giant Washer award for this season goes to yours truly. This article is only six fucking months late, but hey if you were in my shoes you’d understand. Since this isn’t a personal blog, I’ll spare you the story but the good news is hopefully the worst of my life’s problems are behind me now. I graciously accept this award on behalf of all the college assignments I could’ve done on-time but instead chose to turn in late because I was pissing time away in Fallout 3. This one’s for you!

Stick around on BattleBots Update, we’ve got a lot of great content on the horizon with BattleBots’ second ABC season coming up as well as the revival of BBC’s Robot Wars. Especially the Robot Wars thing. Follow us on Facebook to stay up to keep abreast of the goings-on here at The Update!

– Draco