BattleBots Pro League Recap 1 PLUS Interview with James & Kyle of Copperhead

A

Christine is recapping and giving commentary on the first two episodes of the newly revamped BattleBots and interviewing the team for Copperhead on this episode of Outside of the Box.

B

I was a bit nervous, but when I got to the first hit, I was not nervous anymore.

C

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Outside of the Box. And, um, this is a very exciting episode, as I'm sure I noticed. Many people were excited that this show was going to be covering BattleBots again. Not because there hasn't been anything to cover, but this is a little bit more exciting. There's new content and new fights and new teams. So for this first episode, kind of going over the first couple of episodes of the new battlebot season, I am joined by Kyle and James from Team Copperhead to kick this off and talk a little bit about their experience and, you know, the first fight that we're seeing in this first set of episodes. So welcome, both of you to the show.

A

Thanks. We're happy to be here.

C

Yeah. Well, this is very exciting because Copperhead, obviously is not a new robot to BattleBots, but this is a new team for Team Copperhead and obviously a new driver with you, James. So the first thing that I want to talk about is just the experience of doing BattleBots as a new team, because I think most of us have been fans for a long time, but when you actually get to go there and run a robot and have that full experience, I'm sure it's a little bit different than just watching it.

A

Yeah. I mean, thank goodness we were on Team Magnitude before Copperhead, so we. We were able to mentor behind Chad, new one of the greats, and kind of just get a feel for what it was like to run a heavyweight. So really just learning from the people there. And plus, the BattleBots community is so open, so luckily, we weren't completely green. We knew what to expect. We knew what the pits were like. And James has spent a lot of his childhood running around the back of the battle box in the pits, just helping, turning. We have. We have a rule when James was younger that if there's something he can do, he had to do it. What was that with Magnitude?

B

It was throwing in bolts, brushing the bolts, you know, like, getting them clean, because, like, they need to be clean or else they, like, won't go in, Right?

A

Yep. And a lot of loctite, lots of lockdown, so. Yeah, but it is different when you go there with your own robot. Right. I mean, if. If Chad gets, you know, has issues with Magnitude, that's It's on Chad. You know, there's a lot more pressure when it's your robot and it's your team and it's, it's your kid driving. So that definitely steps up the game and the pressure quite a bit.

C

Yeah, for sure. Now, James, were you nervous about driving a battlebot? Because, I mean, there have been some younger competitors. You know, obviously one of my biggest inspirations was Lisa Winter, and she was quite young when she started in BattleBots as well. How did you feel about being a BattleBots driver? For the first time?

B

I was a bit nervous, but when I, when I got to the first hit, I was not nervous anymore.

C

Sometimes it does take a little bit just to kind of say, okay, I'm in the fight, I'm doing this, and then just go from there. I mean, I'm sure that the rest of the teams were all very welcoming to all of you. I mean, you kind of, like you said it already been a part of it, but when it's your own team, it's a little bit different. Who are some of the people in the BattleBots community that you have looked up to besides Chad, obviously, to kind of get that expertise and advice?

B

I mainly look up to which doctor and huge.

A

Yeah. Andrea has been awesome. We had the opportunity to fight Witch Doctor with Magnitude. It was a lot of fun. And, you know, James spent more time in the Witch Doctor booth than our booth. I would also say Tara Tops has been like, kind of. James loves, loves those guys and he spends a lot of time in the Terror Tops booth. They've just been really wonderful. Just super nice, supportive, and, you know, always like, if I lose James, he's in the Terror Tops booth playing video games with those guys 90% of the time. That's, that's where he's, he's at. And they're just a ton of fun to be around, but, yeah, we really like them. Zach with Scorpios has, has been amazing. Bon with Malice has been amazing. I mean, it's such a great community. There's really no one that's not super awesome with us. We, we did have some people doubt us a little bit because we had a nine year old driver. However, I think after they, you know, saw what James can do, we made some believers for sure.

C

Yeah. And speaking of, I want to talk about the first fight, which I think sometimes is always the hardest to just get it out of the. You know, you kind of alluded to that a little bit about kind of getting that first hit. Talk about that first fight. You Know how you feel how it went just talking through it.

B

When I was driving after my weapon went down and exploded and stuff. And after a while I was like, hey, I've drove in some control robots in the lighter weight classes and that just kicked in.

A

So you missed some key parts of the story there. One, yeah, they had their. They went out with their first exchange. One, they had some issues like with the timer and when you're supposed to actually leave the box because like the beep went off before the lights went off and there's all those things. So James actually left the box early and we're like, oh no. And luckily he got back in in time before that because. And it wasn't him. It was a technical glitch. He was just confused which signal to go on. But he got back in the box and then hit jackpot with that first exchange and it was about a 50, 50 exchange. We neither of us were spun up exactly as fast as we wanted to. The other thing I want to know is who is operating the weapon on that one?

B

Me.

A

Yeah. He was sole operator, which I don't know why we made that decision, but we did. He's just used to that with beetles and smaller weight classes. So we're like, well, don't take him out of his zone, you know. But yeah. So the other interesting thing that we weren't prepared for was the battle box is not in that arena, is not set up for someone who's like 4ft tall. Like he had a really hard time seeing anywhere in there. The other thing too, what people don't know is that we were never besides the little test box, we couldn't get in the big arena to test drive so we couldn't do any steering tuning on a brand new robot. This robot's never gone full speed, full power, full turning with the weapon running ever again. He has a little test box and he was handling it great in the test box, but we had no tuning, no anything. So he's going into not only first time ever driving and fighting in the arena, but with an untested robot and he couldn't see a lot of things on there. So one thing you'll notice is when he gets up on the upper deck in the fight Copperhead short to begin with, it's not a very big robot and when it's on the upper deck, he couldn't see it at all. It was just blind to him because he. He's too short to see over the posts and the things, the screws and everything else there so, you know, a lot of people might see him, like, looking like he's, you know, out of control. He had no idea where you were on that upper deck, did you?

B

Yep. What was, like, the scariest bit about it is because I cannot see at all. Like, and when I ran to the side, I did not know I was pointing to the side. I do not know I'm pointing anywhere. I just assumed I was pointing the right way.

A

Yep. And so he actually ended up hitting the pillar, and it shattered our weapon. And this is, like, 20 seconds in. I don't remember exactly when it was. And it was devastating at that moment. Just like, oh, man. Like, he was actually doing okay, you know, like, going 50, 50 on the exchange, then getting on the upper deck and then having that weapon go out. But I don't. That's when you said you. He just, like, finally got off the upper deck, and he's like, all right, no problem. And you look at the robot, it's over steering like crazy because we didn't have a chance to tune it. And the one difference is between the Beatles and the big robot is it doesn't respond instantly. And so he's not used to that. He's used to something that twitches the second you touch the controls. So you see him over steering a little bit, but. And my heart just sunk for the poor guy. And I was like, well, you know, BattleBots, we've. You know, we've been around this. We know what happens. But he didn't give up. I mean, what was. Yeah, you said you just kicked into control mode. Is that what you said?

B

Yep.

C

I mean, that's. That's what you have to do. Sometimes when you lose the weapon, you have less options, and you have to kind of get a little bit creative and use the tools that you have at your disposal. I mean, how did you feel about fighting Jackpot? Just in general, because it can be a pretty tough robot. I've seen it deliver some really tough hits. And, I mean, Jeff and Kat are just such, like, wonderful people as well, so it kind of had to be fun to fight them.

B

Yep. Yeah.

A

Were you worried for Jackpot?

B

Yeah.

A

I mean, not all. It's not just the robot, which is scary in its own right, but Jeff is the most. Probably has the most box time than any human besides Trey, you know, maybe. And even then, because he does that for a living. He drives robots. He's in the. I've never been in the BattleBots arena without Jeff there, you know, or Cat. And so that was, I think, the scary part is going from like, never, ever driven in the box to going against the most experienced driver with a. With a really scary robot. It went our way. Thank goodness. We had a little bit of a luck and a lot of skill. You know, you need both of those things in the. In the box. But, you know, James just started to go. And my. What was interesting is, like, I went from this. You know, he was just cold as ice, man. Like, just like, yep, just doing my job. Like, no panic. Just started going. And once he got a feel for the robot, he. He took over and it was. And like, I. I got a little too excited because, like, I went from like, oh, well, devastating loss to like, oh, like, we. We have a chance. And then when he realized that you had the ground game and that Ace and Jackpot could not get under Copperhead, he was in complete control. And I, I just. I was beside myself and, like, said, you're just a cuke. Cool cucumber the whole time. I don't know how you did that, but it was pretty amazing.

B

Maybe I'm hypnotizing the box. Like, I was like, okay, robot doesn't matter. Anything else?

A

Yeah, you're in the zone, man. That's what it's called, being in the zone. Yeah.

C

But he.

A

My favorite part of the fight is, like, he grabbed Ace and Jackpot and slammed him into the wall. The Jackpot's weapon was down. They had a drive side go out, but they were still controlling. And Ace is always scary, and he got them both and just slammed them in the wall right in front of us and, like, just at our feet. And it was just that this whole. This. This moment where it's like, wow, like, emotionally went from, like, well, we tried, you know, next fight, you know, and then all of a sudden, like, oh, we. We have a chance. Because he was just controlling the rest of the match, and it was like just an emotional rollercoaster for. For the team. And honestly, I mean, one of the. I think it's going to be one of the best fights of Pro league, personally, because of the. Back in the fourth and the. The ups and downs and the. The changes of, you know, the power differential. It's going to be a lot of fun. Do you have a favorite part of that match?

B

Probably when I, When I figured out that I pushed Jackpot and just rammed him into the walls.

A

Yeah.

B

Yeah.

C

Which is hard to do, especially at that level, to scoop up a bot and be able to do that. So, yeah, that's an exciting moment right there for Sure. A couple of other questions. So, you know, Copperhead is obviously a small, compact drum style robot. One of my personal favorites. Is there something that, you know, drew you to this type of robot or like, if you had a chance to build something from scratch net new, would you do something completely different?

A

That's a great question. I don't think a lot of people understand, like we wouldn't have taken over any other team. Literally. That was just no desire at all. We did want to build our own heavy. We're in the process of planning that. That's why we were kind of studying under Chad New and getting to know as we were. We were just trying to figure out the ropes so we could build our own heavy. And then when we found out that, you know, no one had any plans really to do anything with Copperhead, that just kind of planted the seed and it just makes so much sense at so many levels. One, it's a Colorado robot and we take very much a pride in that. We were watching the show as spectators. You know, whenever Copperhead came on, we were just nuts because it was a Colorado robot. Also, it's like a people's robot. It's just welded steel and you know, three motors, three speed controllers. And there's like a beauty to that that it, you know, I think I really respect the robots that are crazy engineered and you know, obviously there's a lot of good engineering in Copperhead, but I just love its simplicity and how it's, you know, at some level it's really accessible and I love how compact it is. And it's also, if you, the most durable robot on the planet in the heavyweights, like by, I mean the one of the robots we have here has been through like three seasons. That's unheard of in Battlebot. So if there is one that you want a nine year old driving, it's Copperhead. So yeah, it was for us, it wasn't like we're just looking for any robot. It was like, you know, we could just take Copperhead and since no one's doing anything, let's see if Zach is into this and, and go from there. And it is, it's what is new this time is. Copperhead has had different managers before, but this is the first time it's had new owners. So it's a whole thing. It's a whole new, whole new team, which is why we changed the logo and everything else. Even though we like the old Copperhead, we wanted to signal to people like, this is, this is new what we're Doing here is, is different. We're, we're taking this, you know, for as long as we can. We can do this.

C

Yeah, for sure. Now as far as. Because there has certainly been a lot of talk amongst the fans. I mean, I think all of us fans are watching the new show and there's been, you know, a lot of praise, a lot of people having different comments and things like that about it as well. What's your take on it? Because personally it's, I think when you are trying something new, right, like BattleBots is doing this on YouTube and the YouTube audience is going to inherently be different than like a normal TV audience. And you have to make some adjustments in order to make it like palatable for the people that are watching it on that platform. And you know, certainly, like, I think that there are some things that can be fixed. It sounds like they understand that and they're working on addressing that and hopefully we'll see some of those changes in the future. But how have you felt watching it so far?

A

So we're in a unique situation because one, not only are we a team now, we're also just, you know, James has been obsessed with Battlebot since he was 4 years old. We're, we're in this zone right now where BattleBots is back and we get to be a part of it. So that is the most important thing for us. Like the rest is minutia, you know, like we're just happy to be here, to be on, to be back and to be there with Copperhead and to have, you know, James, you know, driving and being a part of this whole thing and seeing his dreams come true. So for us, it's like everything else is gravy. That being said, what I think has been interesting is we have seen the positive, the positive and the negative feedback, but what I am really impressed with is that the BattleBots team heard it and it just wasn't like, nope, this is the future. Now we're doing this because we think it's best they went, you know what, we heard you. And we're going to make changes, which I think is a testament to the team, to Trey and all those guys that are managing it, they listened to and they're taking as much action as they can with the time that they have available to improve and take that feedback seriously. And I'm in business and you don't see that very often. It's normally a one sided conversation. The fact that they said, we hear you, we're going to do better and I'm really Excited. I hope we get to see some of those changes tomorrow. It's going to be fun no matter what because we have a nine year old driving Copperhead, so. But yeah, well, that's my take, if that means anything.

C

Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, we all want to see this succeed because, I mean, it's been a very long time for not having, you know, Battle Bots in the way that we're used to, and certainly seeing Farouk and Chris and Kenny involved and, you know, all of that is very welcome, you know, thing to see again. So it's very exciting for everyone, the fans, the builders, you know, everything. So I'm looking forward to seeing what that looks like moving forward.

A

Well, I think the big picture though, a lot of people are missing is that full episodes on YouTube is massive for everybody, for free. Because I grew up in a house that we didn't have cable and I didn't know BattleBots existed, you know, and I had I known I would have probably been all I watched, but it wasn't in my, you know, my scope because we didn't have cable. And then even when James was younger, it was hard to try to track down the services that had BattleBots. And if they can make this work on YouTube, that means anyone can watch any episode at any time. And for kids, that this is their football, this is their soccer, this is their baseball as BattleBots. That's a big deal to be able to just go to YouTube and rewatch your fights over and over. The only reason we have HBO right now is because it's the only show that James watches and I don't wake up to a morning where he's not watching BattleBots. I don't. I can't remember the last time that that wasn't the case.

C

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I'm certainly excited to see more obviously seeing more Copperhead fights in the future and seeing how the season goes. So the. There will be a little bit more to come on this episode as I'm going to share kind of just my overall thoughts on what we've seen so far from Battle Boss. But I appreciate you both for joining me and giving a little bit more insight into what's going on with Copperhead.

A

Yeah, thanks for having us and anytime.

C

Absolutely. Well, if you're watching this, stay tuned for more as I talk about the first couple of episodes. All right, we are back and here to talk more Battle Box, but more specifically about kind of the first two episodes as a whole. And not just specifically about Copperhead, although that Was definitely a highlight for me in the first couple of episodes. So let's kind of shift back to episode one, debut of Pro League. You know, very exciting. I'm going to talk about all of the fights first before I get into kind of the. The editing and obviously some of the commentary that I've seen about that and my personal take on. So, first of all, first fight of episode one, Death Roll vs Golden Fury, both really scary robots. One that's like old school scary that's been around for a long time, and the other one, definitely new school scary. With Golden Fury as being a new robot to BattleBots, I believe it's been around a little while. It's done well in other competitions, but this being the first time at BattleBots, and, I mean, I don't know how much there is to talk about. The nice thing is, is it did go the full three minutes, and that's exciting. And there was one, you know, really big hit. I think the thing that, you know, really impressed me was the durability of Death Roll to just kind of stay in it and try and stay engaged. I actually thought that that fight was really close in the end. I think probably the. The offense and the aggress Fury more early on probably swung it in their direction. But, I mean, I think that it was a really good debut for Golden Fury to show that it does have capabilities. Heartbreaking for the Death Roll team because, I mean, I'm a big fan of that robot. It's. It's in my top five of all time. So I. I hate to see it lose, but I think it was a good fight to kind of kick things off for the Pro League and get into the rest of it, especially since some of the other fights we saw in the first couple of episodes were maybe not quite what we wanted to see, but, you know, still like some really good wins for folks. So after that fight, the next fight was Hypershock versus Huge. And I think the big question in everybody's minds was, like, huge did so good the last time BattleBots had a season. What are they going to do that this time? Because, I mean, it can, you know, hopefully go up from there. They obviously were successful in their first fight, but Hyper Shock, kind of an uncharacteristic fight for them. I know that they've done some changes to the robot and things like that, so that factors into it a little bit. But I have to say, of anything, my heart absolutely broke for Alex because she seemed pretty torn up about it and feeling like it was her fault. And I can promise her, and I'm sure she knows this, you know, now at this point in time, like, it wasn't robots or robots and stuff happens. But I definitely was surprised to kind of just see the wheels come off like that. And, you know, certainly was hoping for a really amazing fight between these two robots. And we did get to see, you know, some things in the beginning, but it wasn't obviously, as long of a fight or as exciting of a fight as we may have hoped. But I think these are the kind of fights where you look at your robot and you say, okay, we put it out there. We saw what happened. We have some data to go back and, you know, make those changes and figure out what went wrong and come back from that. That's something that I hope very much for Hypershock moving forward. And I mean, for huge, you know, they won. I think that they might have liked to get a bit more of a test in that fight, just to kind of set the stage for the future. But the robot did look pretty good. So, I mean, it is certainly promising, and I'm excited to see what both of these robots do moving forward. The third fight of that first episode was End Game versus Malice. And it's, you know, it's another one of those where I. I always have that, like, empathy, either good or bad, you know, depending on the situation for the Team Malice, like, you know, they really, I think maybe took some learnings from the prior seasons, and again, like, the robot looked really good. One thing that I personally love is the fact that Bunny is very vocal about the fact that it is not their team's primary goal to win. You know, they want to see what the robot can do, have some fun and things like that. And for me, that's a big part of what combat Robotics is about, and one reason why I love it so much. That being said, though, getting a win against a robot like End Game that has won so much and has been so proven, you know, in the past, has to feel good. And it certainly did look like it felt really good for Bunny. So, you know, obviously, big congrats to Team Malice on that one. And, you know, Endgame certainly learned some things from that. I honestly didn't get the impression that they went into it assuming that they were going to beat Malice. You know, I don't think that you can sleep on a robot like that. A horizontal was such a big, bulky weapon, because you never know what's going to happen. And, I mean, in this case, Malice came out on top and got A win, which is really great for them. So, moving on to the second episode, I'm not going to start with talking about where the episode started, because we'll get into Tombstone a little bit later, but I'll kind of switch up and talk about Jackpot versus Copperhead. Since we were talking to Kyle and James earlier in the episode, I will say that that interview really helped put a lot of what we saw in the fight into context. In the beginning was seeing a little bit of the erratic driving of Copperhead and things like that, simply because James couldn't quite see as well as he wanted to see. But I have to say that after all of that beginning part and the weapon breaking, he really found his footing and did some pretty fantastic driving to get Jackpot in some bad positions where it eventually ended up catching fire. Like, I do really have to hand it to James for that outstanding control driving, because I don't know that, you know, there's many, many people, like, younger people that are into robots that could just. Just like, pivot and be able to drive like that, you know, because it's what was required given the situation. So it was honestly really impressive. And especially, like, another thing that was mentioned during the interview is that Jeff has so much sick time. Like, so much sick time. So he's a very experienced robot driver and Jackpot is a very good robot. So big kudos to Team Copperhead for that win. It was outstanding and so happy for that, kiddo, you know, to get that win and hopefully build some confidence moving forward. Next fight was Manta versus Scorpios. And so something that I didn't know, like, obviously going into this or hadn't heard, was realizing that Manta only had one copy of the robot. And some may say that that's not a great idea. But I guess also when Manta has won as much as it has, a lot of their fights don't last very long. And so there may not have previously been a need for more than one copy of the robot, which makes, you know, a certain degree of sense there. Obviously, as you can see, in this fight, it wasn't needed because they were able to do what they needed to do to Scorpios. That being said, you never know how that fight would have gone if that loose wire in Scorpios did not come loose, because Scorpios is built like a tank. It's a. You know, it has that. That big armor package up front and is very hard to take down. I suppose if anybody could do it, Manta certainly Could because it's an extremely capable robot. And my personal pick as far as the robot to go all the way because I've seen what it's been able to do in the past and it's just such an amazing dialed in robot and I very excited to see the future fights that Manta has. So the last fight was finally madcatter versus Tombstone, which at the beginning of the episode they tried to start that fight first. Tombstone obviously had some gremlins and they had to pull it and take it back and Rey had to pivot to get a different, an older version of Tombstone. That was another like, very heartbreaking situation to not only see that happen, but to have Rey get the second copy of the robot. And it did work initially, but then it ended up catching on fire and it just, it's hard, especially with, you know, Ray having been away for a while and coming back. And I'm sure, you know, he was very excited to get out there and kind of bring that like mythic Tombstone energy and have it not happen that way in the first fight. Do I think that Tombstone can no longer be successful at BattleBots? No, I don't think that at all. I think Tombstone is still a very capable and scary robot and I'm excited to see, you know, what they can do with some time and some repairs and hopefully they, they have that time to get it working and get it going. But yeah, it was definitely a little heartbreaking as I'm a huge fan of Ray's and hopefully they can get it working. So with all of that being said, as far as the fights, I did want to talk my perspective on the editing. So I with something like this, a lot of changes. I really like to give some degree of grace because not everybody may be thinking of it this way, but YouTube is a different type of platform and the viewers that come to YouTube look for a different type of experience. I can tell you, even from this show, my interviews are a bit longer, longer form. And so I may not get as many views as a really short form recap video because, you know, attention spans and whatnot. So it's understandable that BattleBots would try and adjust to make sure that they're fitting the audience of the platform that they're on. Where I think the balance is needed is that battlebots built in audience that they've cultivated over the years expects a different type of experience. Experience. And so it's hard to make sure you find that balance that you're adjusting for the platform, but not adjusting so much that it alienates the audience that's gotten you there, and I think that that's what they need to figure out. I actually didn't necessarily mind that it was short and that there was some of that, like, filler fluff cut out. It's that the actual editing transitions were so abrupt. It was like, this happens, then this happens, then this happens. And, you know, for me, I need just a little bit more than that. I need a little bit of a softer transition and more behind the scenes. Like, any little bits of the interviews and behind the scenes that they gave, I think were really great, and I do want to see more of that beyond just the fight. So, you know, just even extending the episode out another 10 to 15 minutes and adding a little bit more. More of that in there, I think could be really beneficial and help bridge the gap between those two audiences. So I'm excited that there's new BattleBots, and I think that they. They've heard that feedback and they're working on adjusting that. But obviously, like, anything that's already been edited, it's kind of hard to, like, pivot that hard right away and do a full, you know, a full 180. But I am hopeful that we'll start to see some of those changes and adjustments come into play, and the episodes will be a little bit more palatable to watch for people that expect a slightly different experience. So, yeah, I'm very hopeful. I'm excited that this exists and the teams get a chance to be back on a bigger stage and competing closer to what we're used to with BattleBots. Do I think that this is necessarily in its final form? No, and I don't think that this was intended to be the final form. Right. Like, I think this is BattleBots trying to do something to get this kind of recharged and hopefully move it into something that's more and more closer to what we're used to, but also just with, like, some updates and things like that. So, yeah, I mean, I'm very excited. I think that it's. It's great. It's great to hear Farooq's voice back announcing fights. It's great to see Chris and Kenny in there calling the fights. So it's much closer to the experience than that. You know, I think most of us would expect from BattleBots, and I look forward to more. I look forward to seeing more of these fights, the initial ones anyways, because I didn't see these live. So this is completely new for me, and I don't even know the like the results of any of these fights individually. So it is pretty exciting. But I hope that, as BattleBots fans, everybody continues to watch and enjoy and see how this season plays out. But yeah, that's. That's kind of my initial commentary on it, and we'll see what the next couple of weeks bring. I'm probably gonna do this a couple, a couple of the episodes at a time and go from there. So if you're watching, please make sure that you, like, subscribe, share, comment, all of that good stuff. Keep engaging with Combat Robotics stem, and we'll see everybody next time on the show.