There isn’t much that can prepare you mentally for actually having an opportunity to fight for the Giant Nut. Many members of Team HUGE have had opportunities to win events in the past, whether that be local events or NHRL tournaments. And we’ve even actually won some of them! But the specific stresses, the atmosphere, the effort level, and the costs of Battlebots just make it something exceptional compared to anything else. This is the moment you dream of.
With a win in the Round of 8 over Witch Doctor, we realized that World Championship 7 was crossing from “a great year” into something even more magical. To be fighting for a spot in the finals, after the last 2 seasons HUGE had, served to show how far we had come and how much we had learned.
Copperhead would be our third opponent in a row that was a very short, compact, and highly-competitive vertical spinner. For lack of a better term, we had talked a lot of smack talk for a long time about the small-vertical-spinner type of opponent. And in our last two fights, HUGE lost the use of its weapon due to getting punched very hard upwards (MadCatter) and hitting a very solid object (Witch Doctor).
As for Copperhead, looking at the bot, they appear to have two main design goals:
Punch things upwards very hard
Be a very solid object for people to hit
Crap.
After a 2-3 run in the Battlebots World Championship + the Battlebots: Champions spinoff show, we felt that HUGE still had unfinished business in 2021. The power, speed, and fast spinup of HUGE was really uplifting for us after a tough 2020 season, and we finally felt like the robot was starting to scratch at the limits of its real potential. Plus, we were itching to fight a normally-sized robot after three straight fights against tall, body-threatening opponents.
After a swift exit from the Battlebots World Championship tournament, we set our sights onto the “Battlebots: Champions” spinoff show. This show roughly followed the “Bounty Hunters” format carried over from 2020, but culminating into a final Tournament of Champions to fight for the Golden Bolt trophy. We were placed in the bracket leading to LockJaw, which we felt was a great opportunity for us to show off… if only we could make it to the bounty final.
Our first match in this bracket was against Deep Six - often requested by fans, but dreaded by the team.
Another year, another tournament! We’ve never missed the season’s-end tournament in our four years competing at Battlebots, but this is the first time since 2018 where we’ve really felt confident about our weapon going into the bracket. With the right string of matchups, a HUGE-type robot can be a force in any bracket, and this year’s is no exception.
The race for the Top 32 continues! Our final fight of the regular season is against the 1-1 Switchback. Switchback is coming off an untelevised win over Slammo! a few weeks ago, and is a much more experienced team than their “rookie” status lets on. Plus, the robot showed good weapon power in that fight, and we knew that they had fixed the issues that knocked out their arm against Gruff. We knew this matchup was coming once Switchback started calling us out during the preseason, and we admit the thought of a 70-pound drum flying into our face isn’t our favorite. Thankfully, when a team starts calling us out, we know to put together a plan and armor package just for them!
It works! It works! It finally works like it’s supposed to!
We didn’t know what to expect heading into this fight. Retrograde was a beautifully machined robot built as an offshoot of the skilled team behind Bloodsport. While HUGE had plenty of time in the test box, we only had 10 seconds of fight time in the arena and were left with the uncertainty of new-robot gremlins yet to appear. Retrograde’s first career fight against Rampage also lasted about 10 seconds, where they showed good control and use of both of their weapons. So we had very little fight time with which to judge the capabilities of their robot and of our own, plus no idea what surprises Retrograde could have had in store!
If you have to lose, at least make it look cool!
Coming into this fight, we felt okay about the matchup. Riptide was truly a rookie team, with only some experience in beetleweight robots before this. Plus, they were a low robot with a low weapon, meaning they didn’t pose much threat to our wheels or frame. However, HUGE has a checkered history against eggbeater weapons in the 30lb weight class, with a spotty 1-1 record against the great 30lb robot “Botceps” from the team behind Deadlift (Fight 1; Fight 2). Could be better, could be worse, at least it isn’t Icewave.
