Jessica Chobot (born July 7, 1977) is an American journalist and on-camera presenter who specializes within the video game industry. She was part of the judging panel during the first two seasons of the BattleBots reboot on ABC, and returned for World Championship III of as a sideline reporter and post-fight interviewer.
She swapped roles with Alison Haislip between seasons, but neither returned to BattleBots after the 2018 competition, as the position evolved over time and Jenny Taft took the role of pit reporter for the 2019 and 2020 seasons. This often involved behind-the-scenes segments interacting with teams between fights and proving detailed analysis on their bots. The role of interviewing teams after fights was simply fulfilled by co-presenters Chris Rose and Kenny Florian, and has remained this way ever since.
Outside BattleBots[]
An avid fan of video games, Jessica Chobot initially gained exposure when a photo of her licking a Sony PSP was picked up by video game website Kotaku in 2005. She was hired by IGN in 2006 and three years later, presented IGN Daily Fix. Though this role ended in 2011, she undertook new presenting opportunities that same year. She would later work in a presenting role during parts of E3 in 2011 and alongside Ryan Dunn of Jackass fame, she co-hosted the short-lived G4 reality series Proving Ground.
She later landed a new post with IGN which featured on Inside Xbox, hosting IGN Strategize. Her involvement within the video game industry up to this point led to her voicing Diana Allers, a news reporter in Mass Effect 3. She has also worked on presenting several launch events for up and coming video games, such as that of Halo 5 and Gears of War 4, released in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Since then, she has gone on to voice minor characters in both video game series.
In November 2013, Jessica Chobot became the main host of Nerdist News, which airs every weekday on Nerdist.com and focuses on pop culture, but announced her departure after six years in August 2019. Jessica Chobot was announced as a host of Discovery's Expedition X in February 2020, a spin-off series of Expedition Unknown.
Trivia[]
- Jessica has a YouTube channel simply titled 'Chobot', which has amassed over 48,000 subscribers.[1]
- Jessica Chobot stars alongside Josh Gates in Expedition X, who himself made a BattleBots cameo in 2020, operating Mammoth in its exhibition fight against Black Widow in the lead-up to the premiere of World Championship V.