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@ABronyAccount
Claw Viper sent Ribbot to Suplex City.

Dang man, Claw Viper tho.

Another new episode was just on, and for the first time this season, the judges made a split decision. As a result, we were introduced to a new concept being introduced this season, in which the losing team can appeal the judges’s decision to force a further review of the fight and possibly overturn the initial decision. However, teams are allowed to make such an appeal only once throughout the entire season, so teams will have to really consider if they truly believe they should’ve won a fight that the judges scored against them. Thankfully, the team that lost the split decision that occurred in this episode decided to not appeal, which I think is a fair choice considering that it’s still rather early in the qualifying round with a few more fights left to go that could potentially have good enough results to overcome such a loss.

Also, the new “best of” episode that was on right afterwards (about the top outrageous moments) reminded me of another new rule that was introduced this season. Due to how immensely destructive Deep Six and it’s 100 lb vertical spinner had been in the last few seasons (not just to its opponents but also to itself and the arena), there is now a maximum weight limit of 80 lb for spinning weapons. As a result, Deep Six is no longer permitted to compete, so the team who built it decided to build Triton, which is a horizontal spinner that is right at the 80 lb limit.

Second episode was on last night, and there were quite some spectacular moments, most notably from the very first fight involving Hypershock vs Sawblaze. Sawblaze’s weapon managed to get stuck within the bottom of Hypershock so tightly that not only was the fight ended early due to the crews failing to separate them within the battle box, but we ended up getting multiple updates throughout the episode about further efforts to finally separate those two bots.

First episode of the new season was on just a few hours ago. Interestingly, this season is being identified as “World Championship VII” rather than by a certain year as previous seasons had been. Also, airing right after the new episodes will apparently be a “best of” series of episodes (supposedly even including moments from the older series that was 20 to 25 years ago), with this week’s episode listing the “Top 10 knockouts”.

Perhaps most notable of all for this season is that we’ve been given a complete schedule for who will be all four opponents for each team for the entire qualifying round, and you can see that schedule at this page: https://battlebots.com/match-schedule/

@Background Pony #55DB
A great way to kick off 2023 too.

The new season begins on January 5, so that’s less than three weeks from now.

Noice!

Kraken’s redesign.

Of those, Riptide v Jackpot and Huge vs Shredderator look like super interesting matchups to me! Always eager to see more Cobalt and P1 so I’m glad they’re participating too!

Fight card for Youtube fights:

@Background Pony #C760
“new”
Skorpios just looks so happy making whappy with the elder blade.

Man I used to love the Comedy Central era Battlebots. Looking back it seemed like the stakes were lower and people were more willing to try new stuff (or at least the showrunners were willing to let them).
Too bad the Discovery incarnation won’t spring for Bill Nye and Carmen Electra segments.

Is there no word about Re:MARS battles?

That final championship tournament was definitely fun to watch. All four fights in the first round ended with relatively quick knockouts, with the winners being End Game, HyperShock, Witch Doctor, and Tantrum. Both of the second round fights were much longer and more evenly matched with all four bots ending up with some amount of damage, but the winners were End Game and Witch Doctor. The final battle was another tough one or both sides, but all it took was the first hit to determine who would ultimately win, and that turned out to be End Game. So, in addition to End Game winning the golden bolt, Witch Doctor once again finished as the runner up, HyperShock has now proven to be a very destructive bot, Glitch finally got to fight Witch Doctor as originally scheduled last season, and there are currently serious doubts about whether Tombstone could ever be a serious contender for and future championships. Oh, and this episode also featured a brief segment showing some of the special awards that were presented at the end of last season to some other teams (though I’m afraid I can’t remember any of them in particular at this time).

Guess that didn’t work…

Well, it’s on the official Twitter account for BattleBots, if anyone wants to know where to find it.

(hopefully I’ve got this formatted correctly to post an image behind spoilers) And here’s the bracket for the final championship tournament for the Golden Bolt: [](https://twitter.com/BattleBots/status/1565519968925392896/photo/1)

Almost forgot to mention the fifth episode (and final qualifying tournament) that was on a few days ago. Whiplash reached the end of the bracket after beating Black Dragon, but it was the gatekeeper legend Witch Doctor that won the final match and will be moving on to the championship tournament for the Golden Bolt that’ll be on next Thursday. Honorable mention in this episode to Overhaul for almost beating Black Dragon in the first round.

Fourth episode was pretty interesting. Bloodsport made it to the end of the bracket (beating Blacksmith, which made a rather impressive run), but lost the final fight against gatekeeper Skorpios by a split judges’ decision, so Skorpios is now the first of the “gatekeeper” legend bots to advance to the final tournament for a chance at the golden bolt. Also of note from this episode, after losing a first round match against Blade (the team from South Korea), the team behind Kraken officially announced that Kraken will be retired. Quite sad to see such a durable and fan favorite bot like Kraken will no longer be competing, but the team did assure us that they would return next season with a completely new bot, so I’m curious to see what they’ll come up with.

Third episode was on last night, and boy was that outcome quite unexpected. Glitch (last season’s rookie that went undefeated in qualifying but had to drop out at the start of the tournament due to technical issues) put up an impressive run through the tournament, despite being rather slow and even ending one fight in a double knockout, and finishing it all off by unexpectedly destroying this episode’s “gatekeeper” legend bot, Rotator. So it looks like the rookie team who never expected to see much success will now find themselves among the eight bots in the final championship tournament. Also in this episode’s tournament, it seems Icewave is no longer as powerful and destructive as it used to be, and Uppercut once again blew up Free Shipping in a huge fireball.

So, for the most recent episode, Ribbot was able to advance to the championship final by winning against Lockjaw, which played the role of “gatekeeper” for this episode. I also have to give credit to Deep Six for making such a strong run through this episode’s bracket, so I think we could expect them to be rather impressive once the next regular season gets underway.

Man, that first episode was definitely worth watching. HyperShock just got increasingly more destructive as they progressed, all the way up to obliterating the legend bot Gigabyte. I also got a good laugh out of all the reaction faces everyone expressed from the insane levels of destruction that HyperShock delivered (seriously, someone should post images of those moments on this topic, because they were just that jaw-dropping). I guess now that they’ve finally overcome their infamous glitches, their potential to be a legitimate champion is really starting to show.

It was a pretty great night, I especially loved Claw Viper vs. Defender and Hypershock vs Mad Catter but the amount of padding and commercials really grated on me. I think I’m just going to DVR them from now on and watch when I can skip all that bull.

@Background Pony #D003
Six episodes, by my estimate. One for each of the five openings before the championship tournament for the final episode. The three other participants in the final are already in by default for being past winners of the regular season champions: Tombstone, End Game, and Tantrum. (I guess this means three-time champion Bite Force has officially retired if they’re not participating in this.)

Also, the trophy at the end of this series is a giant golden bolt.