Not much to say when you’re 6-1!!!
First World Problem: it was a major bummer to get the first fight wrong and not have any suspense towards accomplishing a perfect night, alas. Seems like I might be rounding into form. Let’s walk through the fights and review what happened.
Jackpot (2-0) over Malice (0-2)
(My only miss of the night)
Jackpot almost never loses, 5-0 in regular season now. I hope I remember this lesson in a month and pick them. Great weapon, they’re like a extremely Poor Man’s version of Bite Force, or even End Game. Can’t someone just out-maneuver them though? The thing is all kinds of jerky. Why is this so hard?
Ribbot (2-0) over Overhaul (0-1)
Gotta love Ribbot – “yeah, we’re gonna test out a different design today, it might not be optimal but whatever, we need the testing. It’s just the regular season!” I’m putting words in their mouths but I think that’s correct, last year they ended up as the 20 seed in large part because they dicked around in their second match against Madcatter, they had him wounded and turned their back on him to PURSUE MC’s MINIBOT. Madcatter KOed him a second later with a shot to Ribbot’s exposed backside, I think that’s the only KO of Ribbot in modern history. The point is – they’re going to mess around and try different things out in the regular season, as well as paint their robot to mock their opponent and be borderline unsportsmalike at times and just have fun, like a bunch of crazy kids! And then when the tournament arrives they’ll be all business…probably. They certainly focused last year when it counted, making the Final 8, and this year they’re already 2-0 despite all the screwing around I just covered. Good lord, why do these guys get such ridiculously easy schedules? That’s two clamper bots in a row, one a rookie and one coming off multiple missed seasons, I’m not sure we got 90 seconds out of the two matches combined. Anyhow, Ribbot is good. I really like when he does the undercutter weapon, he drives like Valk or Tombstone but faster, it’s very cool to watch. Like a Shark.
Skorpios (1-0) over Blade (0-1)
Jesus Christ that was a slaughter. Excessively so.
Good to see some over-the-top completely unnecessary violence here, for pretty much no reason. Blade might have been counted out multiple minutes before the match ended but Skorp didn’t give them the chance, just kept mauling. Mr Skorpios acted like Blade chopped his dog into little pieces, it was indulgent, and it was great. Not a lot of close fights recently, hopefully BB is setting the foundation for a ton of great matchups in the second and third “rounds” of the regular season. Anyhow, Skorpios can stay Top 20 after a performance like that. On the other hand, Blade does look cool!
I would have loved to see those judges scorecards. Had to be 11-0 across the board right? Maybe Skorp loses a Damage point somewhere for smoking?
Tombstone (1-1) over Mammoth (1-1)
Talk about barely scraping out a win! Good lord!
It took a Double-Knockout, or a Simultaneous Incapacitation if you prefer, that the Judges then resolved, to get Tombstone into the win column in 2021*, but he did it. Credit to the old man, he ABSOLUTELY needed to have this match in order to have a season, that was the position he was in. Now anything can happen, he’s 1-1.
So is Mammoth, I still think Mammoth could be really good, possibly very good to great with that outlier design, but he did lose here (he starts with a win and then follows it up with a loss every year, I am informed) and with have a hard problem against violent horizontal spinners, of which the sport has many. I thought that concussive hit was caused by Mammoth’s flipper arm being involved, nope. Tombstone just drove heads on into the wheel gearbox(?) or whatever that is and it caused a massive impact. Speaking of which…
HIT of the Week
That was some serious power, oh my, and it produced the highly unusual Double KO. I think Battlebots has about one of those a year. We’ll see what happens to these two down the stretch, they’re right in the thick of it. Hopefully they are both playoff teams!
Tantrum (2-0) over Lucky (0-1)
Oh man.
I mean, Tantrum should be sitting at 1-1 and we should be questioning how good it really is, or if the new ownership isn’t up to the task, or something. But Lucky bizarrely decided to pursue a clearly pinned Tantrum (how badly did those first 15 seconds go for them, good lord! It was Huge-esque) and delivered a flip that set them free. I guess through a certain lens it’s good sportsmanship, or good for the viewer, but if you’re trying to win that’s a really bad idea, to give an opponent a second chance, and this is a very bad choice of robots that you’d want to give an opening to. They’re tough, they’re incredible strong and resilient, and they never seem to take any damage. Lucky, your only chance was pinning them, and you did it immediately! Your strategy, or what SHOULD have been your strategy, worked to perfection, and then you just gave it up because you felt like fighting more or something. You completely blew it. It’s a major bummer.
God I love the sound, the hummmm, of that Tantrum weapon when it gets fired up, hell yeah. Like Ribbot they need a big test, maybe they could fight Ribbot! There’s a couple of unique souls that deserve each other.
Glitch (1-0) over Ghost Raptor (0-1)
All I remember is that the fight was extremely weird, one of the strangest to watch in a while. Glitch was glitching its movements all over the place and kind of drifting sideways in a highly counter-intuitive manner, almost like the floor was ice that was being tilted. I don’t know, Glitch won, I can’t even remember if it was a KO or what. Next.
PS Oh yeah Glitch was stuck at one point and GR freed them, two fights in a row where the eventual loser freed the eventual winner and snatched defeat from victory. Don’t Be Nice! Don’t Do It!!!
Sawblaze (2-0) over Madcatter (1-1)
I was tired (and I haven’t finished the rewatch) so my memory is a little hazy but I don’t recall Madcatter scoring a hit, or doing something effective, or anything positive at all happening for them in the 3 minutes or whatever it was they fought for. One of the most complete wire-to-wire wins we’ve seen. I mean, Sawblaze doesn’t get KOs much, he has to be on point and not make a mistake for much longer periods of fighting time than others do (didn’t Uppercut matches last year last an average of 50 seconds something like that?). It’s a long and complete performance every time now, every match, the robot is absolutely brilliant. I don’t ding Madcatter too much here, they’re still an above-average, I just think SB is on another planet at the moment.
After two shockingly dominant showings against two very quality robots (playoff teams at least, we’ll see about Minotaur) I’m starting to wonder if Sawblaze should be the favorite in the whole field. He scooped both of them up and controlled them the entire match – why couldn’t he do the same thing to End Game? End Game does that jerky thing where they lift up the sides of the bot, Sawblaze will pounce on that easy. Now, it’s always possible he could take a massive hit, like he took from Uppercut, and he could have taken that same caliber shot today from Madcatter, but he avoids it…I think he’s going to win. Every time. The driving is untouchable, he doesn’t make mistakes.
(Also, not to be overlooked for sheer aesthetic value – Madcatter’s minibot died a miserable and extremely smoky death, which resulted in some incredible visuals)
(Seriously, it’s like a bomb went in the background, shades of ‘Nam)
Anywho, Sawblaze will end up fighting some absolute juggernaut in Fight 3, whoever is also 2-0 and looking like the 1 seed, the only restriction being they probably will try to avoid a recent rematch. End Game sounds good to me (well, we’ll see what happens in the main event this week), Black Dragon works, Ribbot is already 2-0 and ready to go. That’ll be one of the great Main Events in the second half of the regular season, I can’t wait.
Season Record to Date: 17-11
The Battleblog 