Current Events > BattleBots Champions week 5 discussion topic *spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

The final spot in the tournament of champions is up for grabs.

https://i.imgur.com/ApSiNHF.jpg

Among the bots in the field tonight are former main series runner-up Whiplash, former desperado tournament winner Black Dragon, and the bot with the youngest prodigy driver in the sport, Perfect Phoenix. Waiting at the end as the last bounty bot of the season is Witch Doctor, the runner-up of the most recent main tournament. As a reminder, please put any discussion of match results under spoiler tags until 24 hours after the episode airs out of consideration for people who can't watch the episode live, especially if you decide to watch the episode early on Discovery+ before it airs on TV. Showtime for us TV viewers is 8PM EST tonight on Discovery, about 15 minutes from the time of this post.

IT'S ROBOT FIGHTIN' TIME! The show starts off with Perfect Phoenix vs. Subzero.

only one spot remaining

Perfect Phoenix vs. SubZero was an absolute mauling as I expected, Subzero got wrecked. Overhaul vs. Black Dragon was a lot of fun and way better than I expected it to be. I've always enjoyed the Overhaul team (their captain is a shitposting weeb) but Black Dragon was just too much for them. That suplex was pretty sick though.

All of the cross-promotion BattleBots has been doing with AEW lately made that perfect suplex by Overhaul even better

No surprise there, a masterclass of driving control from Whiplash.

I'm not sure what to make of Captain Shrederator vs. Ghost Raptor though. One bot has a habit of randomly dying at inopportune times, and the other has a habit of exploding when hit in the right spot. I can't predict who will die first.

Dunno if I'm too late, but I'd like to see Black Dragon, on fire, versus Witch Doctor at the end of the episode. Here's hoping things shape up that way.

Ghost Craptor

Whiplash stuck with just the lifter and forks, and this time it didn't work out. It controlled the fight for a while, but Witch Doctor found the opening and delivered the knockout blow. It was a great fight though, and I'm really hyped for the tournament of champions next week.

Whiplash is an absolute delight to watch. Even losing to Witch Doctor was great. Put it's always amazing to see Witch Doctor work too. When it's on point it's as dangerous as any bot can be.

I think in that last match the killing blow probably severed some battery wires or something else equally critical. You could see how it tore small bits of metal off the other bot.

This was actually tweeted out yesterday, but I wanted to wait until after the 24-hour spoiler period was done to post it here:

https://i.imgur.com/gDmsK7F.jpg

There's our bracket for the tournament of champions next week. Interestingly, all but one of the first-round matchups are rematches of past fights, but they're rematches of fights that previously happened with very different versions of these bots. Tantrum was still using fists in season 3 when it got demolished by Tombstone, End Game was still having reliability issues in season 4 when it lost to Ribbot, and Hypershock is looking a lot better and more reliable now than it did when it lost to Skorpios in season 3 and again in the first Bounty Hunters series. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if all 3 of them avenged their prior losses.

The one matchup that isn't a rematch, Witch Doctor vs. Glitch, is a match that should have happened in the first round of the season 6 tournament, but was taken away from us when Glitch unfortunately had to pull out of the tournament due to mechanical issues.

So who's taking home the Golden Bolt?

I dunno, but I want to see Witch Doctor versus the Hypershock that kicked off this tournament. Two bots enter, one bot leaves.

Personally I'm of the opinion that Tombstone's design has fallen behind where the bots are today. Any of the bots that can take a hit from Tombstone and keep going will probably find that they can disable Tombstone in short order.