The BattleBots Pro Championship was a BattleBots-sanctioned event held in 2009 within the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California. It was one of three divisions which made up the 2009 BattleBots Championships.
Registration opened to heavyweights in January 2009, and closed in March that year. In the end, 25 teams with heavyweight robots weighing up to 220lbs entered the Pro Championship, though only 24 of these would actually compete in the tournament itself.[1] This field included upgraded/redesigned robots from the Comedy Central era such as Surgeon General and Warrior, as well as early versions of robots which would enter the rebooted ABC and Discovery seasons, such as the heavyweight incarnation of Tombstone. Like other events sanctioned by BattleBots, fights were held within a version of the iconic BattleBox shared with the concurrently-run Collegiate and High School championships.
The main tournament adopted a double-elimination format, similar to those from previous live events such as the 2004 NPC Charity Open. Robots defeated in the main rounds would be relegated to a 'Losers' bracket' run in parallel, with the aim of staying in the competition and securing a place in the overall final against the best-placed robot in the 'Winners bracket. Such was the nature of the format, that robots in the Losers' bracket often required more fights to reach the final than those in the Winners bracket. A non-championship exhibition battle was also staged at the end of the competition, this being a head-to-head match between Jim Smentowski's Breaker Box and Team PlumbCrazy's Stinger: The Killer Bee.[2]
As with other heavyweight events, the 2009 Pro Championship took place in a variant of the large BattleBox arena, though with more compact dimensions comparable to those for the annual BattleBots IQ tournaments held in years prior. The hazards received their own set of changes over their Comedy Central-era equivalents, with two Pulverizers per arena side being operated by the competing teams, and the Screws being redesigned with completely serrated edges. The Killsaws and Hellraisers would also make their return, their functionality identical to previous versions.
The event was ultimately won by Paul Ventimiglia of Aptyx Designs, whose overhead bar spinner Brutality defeated Donald Hutson and Root Canal in the final.[3] Aptyx Designs would later go on to win three Giant Nuts in the reboot era of BattleBots with Bite Force.
Attempted Broadcasting Deal and Availability[]
Along with the Collegiate Championship, the 2009 Pro Championship was planned to be broadcast by Fox Sports, after an initial deal for CBS Sports to air the former fell through. However, Fox would later abandon these plans, likely sharing CBS's issues with finding suitable advertisers for the event's commercial spots.[4] Thus, neither the Pro nor Collegiate Championships would be televised, nor would these events be publicly released in their entirety along with the High School Championship.
For more, see BattleBots Collegiate Championship 2009.
Competitors[]
| Competitor | Builder/Team |
|---|---|
| Agent X | Team X-Bots |
| Bender | American Performance Robotics |
| Breaker Box | Team Nightmare |
| Brutality | Team Demolition |
| Counter Revolution | Team Boilerbots |
| Drumble-B | Team Eacret |
| Emily | Team Moon |
| Eugene | Team Moon |
| Hugs & Kisses | The Bot Dudes |
| Megabyte | Robotic Death Company |
| Mudhole Bullfrog | Team Wapu Kai |
| Root Canal | Mutant Robots |
| Safety Factor | Backlash Robotics |
| Shrike | Rabid Robotics |
| Stinger: The Killer Bee | Team PlumbCrazy |
| SubZero | Team Hammertime |
| Surgeon General | Team Loki |
| Suspect Device | Fever Island Robotics |
| The Black Knight | Mechanical Reduction |
| The Loach | Team Pterodactyl |
| Tombstone | Hardcore Robotics |
| Vault | Team UI |
| VD6.0 | Team Think Tank |
| Warrior | Team Whyachi |
NOTE: Deimos Prime was also registered to compete, but did not fight for unknown reasons.
Results[]
Source: Official BattleBots 2009 Championship Match Results.[2]
NOTE: Matches in italics indicate those with footage publicly released by BattleBots and/or Autodesk Inventor.
Full tournament bracket (Credit: Team Run Amok).
See Also[]
Trivia[]
- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was present in the audience for this particular BattleBots event.
- According to the Builders Database, there was not a finite amount of slots for the competition, and each had a $500 entry fee.[14]
- The official schedules for the 2009 Championships mention that a 2v1 exhibition match was planned to take place at the very end of the event. This was to have involved Pro competitors Stinger: The Killer Bee and Breaker Box teaming up against Counter Revolution, though the match does not appear in official match results, likely suggesting that it did not take place.[15]
- Pro Championship competitor Mudhole Bullfrog later registered for BattleBots Proving Ground in 2023.
References[]
- ↑ Builders Database entry on 'Registered Bots' for the 2009 Pro Championship (archived)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Official BattleBots 2009 Championship Match Results
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgKWVtornQQ
- ↑ 'The BattleBots Season That Never Was', Sterling Brown, Third Law Sports, 14 July, 2016 (archived 19 July, 2016)
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6ujOEd1ZAQ
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pauS4CqYw9s
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJWY2jZcN5M
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZacsRwDnC0
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z25syRVWxtY
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhS4VwWSKE
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f07p73N9Ryo
- ↑ Brief highlights shown in the opening for World Championship III, Episode 4.
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgKWVtornQQ
- ↑ Builders Database entry on the 2009 Pro Championship (archived)
- ↑ Official 2009 Championship match schedule
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