Fight Breakdown
Jonathan Schultz
HUGE vs. Sawblaze - WCVII Fight #9 - Finals!

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.

HUGE vs. Sawblaze - WCVII Fight #9 - Finals!
Fight Breakdown
Jonathan Schultz
HUGE vs. Copperhead - WCVII Fight #8 - ...

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.

HUGE vs. Copperhead - WCVII Fight #8 - Semi-Finals!

Retrograde Battlebots

HUGE vs. Retrograde - 2021 Fight #2

HUGE vs. Retrograde - 2021 Fight #2

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!