Derek Young is one of three current permanent BattleBots judges, alongside Lisa Winter and Fon Davis. A former competitor, he first began appearing during the 2018 season as a guest judge, and has held the role permanently since World Championship IV.
Young competed in all five Comedy Central seasons, also entering World Championship I and II with a 250lb rebuild of his middleweight Complete Control. Since becoming a father between filming for the 2016 and 2018 seasons, Derek officially retired from competing. However, in late 2017, it became apparent that Fon Davis was unable to return to judging. Greg Munson reached out to Derek Young, who rotated with Naomi Kyle and a rotating cast of celebrities and fellow former BattleBots competitors during the 2018 competition. He has retained this judging role ever since.
Outside BattleBots[]
Derek Young's fighting robot ambitions began in 1994 after reading an article in Wired magazine about a US event called Robot Wars. As an aspiring artist with RC experience, the concept peaked his interest. At the time, however, Derek was a high school student in Georgetown, Ontario, so lacked the facilities to build his own robot and travel across countries to compete.
In 1996, he chose to study engineering at Simon Fraser University outside of Vancouver BC, where he found himself within a day's drive of San Francisco. With the help of some willing classmates and generous sponsors, a 25lb thwackbot named Mr. Smashy was assembled in SFU's student machine shop to compete at Robot Wars. However, a 1998 event was never held and Mr. Smashy was shelved. Young then learned about BattleBots, where he debuted Son of Smashy a year later.
