S U N D A Y

Sunday was even more of a blur than the previous day, as I was busy all day working on the robot, waiting in line, or competing. All in all, I probably remember less of the crucial parts, but I'll try.

Sunday Morning SOS Vs. Deadblow
I was checking out Grant's robot on Saturday night, and I figured I could get through the 1/8" or so aluminum armour that the top was covered in. What I was really looking for was to knock a hole in one of his carbon fibre air tanks ;). As it turned out the match wasn't quite as good as I had hoped. At the start Deadblow and SOS charged at each other and begun to swing hammers. A few shots were exchanged before Deadblow's hammer managed to wedge itself behind the axle that SOS's torsion spring rode on. Grant couldn't get his hammer out, and mine was jammed in the loaded position. We were stuck this way for a bit, before the crowd got restless. The arena workers decided to pause the match and try to separate the robots. They headed out there with crowbars and proceeded to wrench on the robots in an attempt to free them. They finally got the robots apart. After this Deadblow had slowed down and he was an easy target. He eventually stopped moving altogether and the win was given to Son of Smashy. Hooray!

As it turned out, when the guys were prying the two robots apart, they scraped a crowbar over Deadblow's electronics, shorting out some components - ouch! My win wasn't so heavily deserved after all. Checking out Deadblow's damage however, was cool. My newly added spike put some serious holes in the armour, and there was evidence that it caused damage just millimetres away from the RX at one point!

That was all for the morning. We topped up the batteries and watched the robot fights. Some of the best ones happened on Sunday. Some of my faves: Nightmare Vs Killerhurtz, Kill-o-Amp Vs Crock, Ziggo Vs. whoever...

Sunday Afternoon SOS Vs Knee Breaker (Twice)
This match worried me a bit. The robot Knee Breaker was a new creation of Christian Carlberg and Clint Lynch, it had a big long hammer tail that was used in a spinning type attack technique. I knew that Knee Breaker was capable of inflicting damage, and it was well built. Clint and Christian were nice guys and we I think we were all looking forward to a good match. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. The match started well enough with both our robots exchanging hits, but then something went awry, SOS could only turn in place! Oh no! I could sort of cause the robot to rock back and forth, simulating motion, but for all intensive purposes it was immobile. I tried to get closer to Knee Breaker to do some damage, but I couldn't get close enough and then neither could he! His chain fell off and he was down to one wheel as well! We were sitting 10 feet apart from each other spinning and not coming close. This is when the crowd started booing. After 30 seconds they called the match and it went down to a crowd vote. The crowd booed Knee Breaker and booed SOS more but interspersed in the booing were a couple of cheers, and the match was given to me. All in all, it sucked. I probably should have lost, but I wasn't going to argue at this point. I felt bad for Clint, but as it turned out we got to meet again. If you want to see this horrible match on Real Video click here

After pulling SOS out of the arena we opened it up to take at look at what happened. Kneebreaker had hit us hard enough to finally break the crappy welds that were holding together the aluminum drive train module pilfered from Mr Smashy. This had knocked the chain off the left hand side, rendering the thing busticated. Oh yeah, one of our motors brush holders had melted and a power wire had fallen off, but it was ok because we've got 4 of them --- let's here it for redundant systems! A mad repair session ensued and we bolted the whole works back together. At this point though we were doing ok, because by winning the match against Knee Breaker, it put us into the finals.

We watched the other semi from the losers' bracket, which was Knee Breaker Vs Turtle Road Kill. I didn't really want to face Turtle Road Kill in the finals. The reason was two-fold, firstly it was really solidly made, with a hella thick steel shell, so my chance for fully disabling it was pretty slim, and secondly if it came down to a crowd vote, they had the advantage because it was driven by a little kid. Clint managed to pull it off though, as the kid drove his robot into the saws and flipped it on its lid! And this is after Knee Breaker's chain had fallen off again! I was stoked, as were Clint and Christian. I was really happy to get a rematch against Knee Breaker.

The final was very shortly after this, and the match went ok. We started again getting hits in on each other, and either the Smashy device or the saws knocked his drive chain off, and he was declared immobile and Son of Smashy was the winner -- champion even! Crazy! It all happened really quickly. Trey came up to the ring and gave my trophy (the giant machined Al nut). I was just so overwhelmed by the whole thing!

On to the requisite post win interview, where I choked and really couldn't think of anything to say. I should have thanked a bunch of people, and I didn't get the chance so I'll thank them now:

Thanks to: All the people who sponsored me last year to build Mr Smashy which made it possible to build this robot. My friends Steve and Ed for helping me in the pits and making the trip possible, my girlfriend Gill, who put up with me being busy every night for the 4 weeks before BattleBots, and who unfortunately couldn't make it to LA this time. To the organizers of BattleBots for putting on such a great event. All the other builders who really made the competition a great time. I could go on...

After coming to grips with winning, I realised that I had to still compete in the robot rumble at the end! We quickly switched the batteries and pulled SOS back into the ring, this time with all the other Megabots in there too! This was bound to be crazy. Before the rumble Ilya and crew visited all the Megabot teams making sure that all robots were to gang up on the robot Stuffie - who had had it too easy all weekend. It was all agreed, (most teams already had this in mind The rumble was pretty fun in the end, but the other side of Son of Smashy's drive train suddenly died, and I got stuck against a wall. I convinced Ilya, who was standing beside me to get Carnivore over to unstick me, but I played a cruel trick and started pounding on his robot when he got near. It was all in good fun though, and Ilya said later that the holes looked cool. I watched a bit of what was going on, and it was pretty clear that Grant's newly repaired Deadblow was taking control. He ended up winning the rumble which was a nice bonus for him, especially after working all day to get his robot working again.

It was all over for us at this point, so we cracked some cans of cheap American beer (Busch I think) and grabbed some food out of the courtesy room and sat and watched the rest of the event. We talked to some of the spectators, hung out with team Finagler and did an interview for Playboy Online. The kilo and giga rumbles were crazy, and I won't bother describing them here. You'd have to see it to really appreciate it. After all was said and done, we started to clean up and pack up our gear.

An hour or so later, we had the Escort loaded and were ready to roll. We said our final good byes and hit the highway at 11pm. BattleBots was over, and we had a big aluminum nut sitting on the floor in front of our car's passenger seat, and a cheque in the mail. The trip was a success. We had originally planned to go to Las Vegas on the way home, but we figured we were leaving pretty late, and we shouldn't push our already shining luck. We were on our way back to Canada.

To see more pictures from Sunday, click below:

More Pictures from Sunday.

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More Pictures from Sunday