This was probably the only week this year that I felt was extremely meh. Some significant teams got their records to 2-1 (Cobalt, Minotaur, Valkyrie if you’re into that sort of thing). Cobalt woke up, Blip was hella impressive again, and Lock-Jaw is apparently bad now. But the fights, eh, I dunno, not very compelling.

And then I pretty much forgave the entire episode because the main event was so goddamn good. The best one this year by a mile, IMO.

So I’ll talk about that, we’re going to hit a couple bullet points otherwise, but not much of a real recap this time. I’ve got to preview a 32 team tournament plus breakdown Week 10 as well, which was a little more significant and compelling than its predecessor. Garbage main event though. Anywho! Here we go, we’ll do this quick.

Cobalt Awakes!

See, a long time ago I was excited that Cobalt had returned, and then they looked like ill-conceived garbage in their first fight, a highly non-competitive loss to Fusion. Then they won fight two against Ghost Raptor, who I don’t believe has won a fight in multiple seasons now, and at one point Cobalt got stuck in the screws like a dumbass. I made fun of them here. But then tonight – THIS was what I expected from the start! This was what prime Cobalt looked like back in 2019! It’s effing awesome! So yeah, I don’t know what the hell they were doing in their two true competitions, and of course I’m miserable that they “put it all together” against my favorite robot and humiliate him in their pivotal match (RIP Gruff), but hey, I’m a Cobalt fan as well as a Gruff fan. I still worry they’re a hot mess, I’m still nervous about the driver knowing what he’s doing with the robot, but there’s what the ceiling looks like, if anyone wasn’t sure. They are absolutely vicious, like Tantrum had Uppercut’s weapon strapped to its back. It’s a great show. We’ll see where they land in the playoffs.

Duck! is just awful, yikes. Hard to watch at this point. Riptide is pretty good and their weapon is crazy powerful. They’re having the best rookie season for sure…well Glitch is pretty good too haha. Anyhow they’ll be in the mix in the weeks to come. Valkyrie remains mediocre IMO but they’re in the playoffs again, so good for them. Minotaur basically won a complete non-competitive effort from Deep Six, I think it KO’d itself right?

Yeesh.

I can’t stand Hijinx and it looked like Subzero fell apart, apparently they’re terrible too. Also terrible…Lock-Jaw, babe, what happened to you? I guess every season is always a small sample size, he seemed to be unlucky tonight and knock out his own weapon. Do I remain hesitant to give Blip credit? Yes, yes I do. I don’t believe in them, sorry. They’re 3-0 and will be a highly seeded robot, sure, oh crap they’re a rookie too haha. So yeah they’re the best rookie. But I’m very uneasy, of anyone they had a crazy easy schedule, and it’s tough being a flipper, see what happened to Hydra last week. It’s tough being anyone without a powerful spinning weapon this year, really. Maybe I’ll eat it in a couple weeks, but no, this is a hot take from the Battleblog: I don’t believe in Blip. I don’t think they’re very good.

Let’s take care of the weekly award…

HIT of the Week

I didn’t know where to go with this one, I thought about giving it to Deep Six for Deep Sixing itself…and then I remembered that Gruff exploded, and this would make the second time this season that Cobalt won HIT of the Week. Good enough! I’m sold. Anytime someone’s gas tank for their flamethrower blows up is something that should be honored in this spot. Like here, a few weeks ago

BOOM Baby

• Ok, the main event!

I don’t know if it’s more deadly robots in the current generation, or what, but it does feel like we have less fights where robots just beat the piss out of each other for long periods of time. Feels like weapons break early, or robots break early, and the fight either ends in a KO or the participants are highly wounded and it’s a “hospital fight”. Last week Blacksmith-Malice treated us to a classic slugfest, exactly the kind of match I feel has gone away recently. And then we got another one, an even better one.

Wow. All credit to Skorpios and their job as valiant loser here, but Yeti put on a performance. They would not stop hitting, they would not stop slamming, they just kept going and going and going. The great thing here was that Skorp absorbed most of it, they have that bigass wedge and it can take many punches. And then they had some terrific counters! If anything Skorp uses his saw even less than his more talented cousin Sawblaze, but here (and more this season I guess) he landed some precise tactical shots with that weapon. And to land strikes like that in the absolute chaos that was this fight, with Yeti driving like a madman and hitting Skorpios every few seconds, that takes some talent. Skorpios is 1-2 and I think I’m more impressed with them this year than they were last year at 2-1 and the 10 seed. They cut one belt early that was very fine work, then went after the tires for a while and found some success. They took another swing at the belt later and soon thereafter the weapon went down, so who knows what exactly happened there.

That’s the kind of fight I absolutely adore, where the loser does not lose but is merely outplayed. Yeti would have won going away if his weapon held up, but Skorpios very strategically disabled it, and that gave us a very close split Judges Decision. Yes, Yeti was the clear winner and I would have been devastated if 2 out of 3 people disagreed, but 1 out of 3 felt right. If that makes sense. Yeti showed a lot in this fight and I wonder if they have enough to make a tournament run. They got their clock cleaned by Madcatter, some robots are going to be a bad matchup for them, but given the right opponents anything is possible. Those forks were super low and the adjustability is awesome, gives great flexbility to go low or high, and gives this chaotic robot more tools to improvise with.

Again, just a wonderful fight, a joy to watch and root for Yeti and sweat out the dramatic split decision from the judges. Thank you Battlebots.