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Battlebots is returning to Discovery Channel January 5th, 2023 so it’s time for a new thread! This thread is going to also aim to discuss some of the other robot competitions coming in 2023. Most notably and worth watching is NHRL. RoboGames is also returning for 2023. The current trend with Battlebots is to not know what the gently caress to call their championships, so the main series this year is Championship VII. Battlebots is also returning next summer with a Champions II tournament. Discovery channel increased their order for this upcoming season, so we are getting 19 episodes of Battlebots. This increase has given the competing teams 4 fights before the 32 bot championship tournament. Some bots however are “Reserve bots” and are only there to fill out the fight cards, but don’t get the 4 fights or a shot in the 32. There is a list of changes for this season, which can be found on this Wiki page. But here are a few of them! * Judge Jason Bardis is gone, replaced by Fon Davis who was on the judge panel for the first ABC season. * The event also features a challenge rule for competitors who are upset over a judge decision. And gets the judges another chance to watch the fight and decide if the decision was correct. * Bombshell builder, Mike Jeffries is now a “Match Steward” and is the go between between the builders and production / judges I guess. * The out of arena areas by the arena doors are still possible, but sounds like they changed it to make the area smaller and harder to get. Some notable teams were not able to make it to Battlebots for this season, most significant of the missing bots are Tombstone & Uppercut. Not sure why Uppercut couldn’t make it, but Ray Billings of Tombstone got into a bad fight with a table saw and was / is still recovering from it, here is the glove. If you are interested, this is a nice video that shows all 50 robots competing and also specifies the teams stuck being the “Reserve” teams. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6eTQ-YoA24
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Dec 13, 2022 11:07
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 01:08 |
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I couldn’t make a new Battlebots thread without adding a focus to NHRL, which is a really well run robot competition that runs about 7 events per year and features 3, 12, and 30 pound bots. NHRL always stream their events on YouTube with a good team of announcers that lately have included Ricky Williams of team Mammoth. They usually do a full event in a single day though, which leads to 12+ hours of pretty much nonstop robot combat. This Saturday, December 17th is their grand finale event for 2022, so only the top 4-5 bots from each event during the year are invited, so it’s very likely going to be a lot of fun and you should watch it! Some notable entries into the final include a couple bots from Jameson Go and Team Minotaur. The teams get a weight bonus for running non wheeled bots & also for running multibots, so you'll see plenty of teams running 2 bots or experimenting with non wheeled designs. NHRL have raised the stakes by putting up $1 million dollars for STEM charities for the Finale. Every team is getting $5,000 to donate to a STEM charity of their choice. And the winning team from each weight class is getting $250,000 to donate to a STEM charity. To take it another level, NHRL is also putting up $1 million dollars in the form of 100 - $10,000 grants to local colleges, I believe for robot competition, not sure the requirements for that though. In addition to the finals coming up on Dec 17th, the event dates for NHRL in 2023 are: Jan. 28 (only new bots) March 18 May 6 June 24 August 12 September 30 Finals November 11 Still curious, here are some notable and fun fights, some of which are the comedy / troll bots. Team Deep Six enters a bot that moves only with 2 high speed blades, does nothing and breaks the box, also the judges make a dumb decision. Happens in all competitions... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-CM7XTEOkc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK5CvCw69ko A comical fight, giant inflatable penguin vs a flame thrower... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNodm-h1Wbs SLICK GOKU BABY fucked around with this message at 11:16 on Dec 13, 2022 |
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Dec 13, 2022 11:07
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There is also another way to get your Battlebots fix.  There is a new upcoming nightly show in Las Vegas, called Battlebots Destructathon. Not sure the details but Las Vegas entertainers will pretend to drive fan favorite bots while someone else actually drives them, hidden away somewhere. https://battlebots.com/tickets/ quote:BATTLEBOTS: DESTRUCT-A-THON contains all the drama, action and destruction of the TV series, condensed into an intense, fast-moving, 80-minute theater show, featuring many of the most famous robots that have delighted millions of fans all over the world, such as Witch Doctor, Kraken, Mammoth, Lock-Jaw, Hypershock and Whiplash, as well as several new robots being specially created for the show. The robots are currently being built by existing robot combat teams.
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Dec 13, 2022 11:25
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El Fideo posted:The Vegas stage show is interesting in a lot of ways. One of the biggest limitations for most teams is the difficulty in testing and practicing. These teams are going to be getting a whole lot more driving and fighting time than most others. There's maybe more information about it here https://battlebots.fandom.com/wiki/BattleBots:_Destruct-A-Thon. But the bots are not going to be operated by their normal teams. Although they still likely can get a lot of information about the matches and could improve their designs more than other teams.
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Dec 13, 2022 23:43
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PostNouveau posted:They were casting actors to play the teams while someone behind the scenes drove, so I think they're just going to have in-house engineers and drivers while licensing the robots. I imagine they will get some feedback about performance, but I question how much it will be beneficial. Part of the press release says they will be purpose built versions of fan favorite bots. I imagine that they would likely use some cheaper materials and parts and build the bots so they'd be quick and easy to fix.
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Dec 14, 2022 11:05
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ewe2 posted:Anyone else watching the NHRL stream? Some great fights, and I didn't expect some Battlebots alumni in the compettion. Jake Ewart dropped into the chat to boost Jamison Go who's competing in all 3 classes today. I've just caught Silent Spring win a match, great bot. It was super laggy earlier today, but the stream is great now. Still a bunch of fights, and they are mostly in the 12 & 30lb weight class since they only 1 box for those bots ! And yea, Battlebots alumni have a lot of bots at NHRL. There's also a few of the rookie teams at Battlebots that have come up from NHRL. There's at least 3 bots in the upcoming Battlebot seasons that are entirely from the NHRL teams! SLICK GOKU BABY fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Dec 18, 2022 |
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Dec 18, 2022 02:07
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Fun match from the last NHRL event. 2 Battlebot teams running non wheeled bots in the 30lb class, so they are 45lb with the weight bonus. (Team Shatter & Team Deep Six, but Triton for the upcoming season) Depth Charge will be pretty fun if they figure out how to control it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Agc-QicMek
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Dec 19, 2022 17:42
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Only 5-6 days away from the return of Battlebots. Discovery+ has been getting the new episode in the early AM of the show airing, not sure if that will continue or not. As an extra for this season, the teams knew all 4 of their fights at the start and apparently all the fight cards are available on Facebook as part of the Battlebots membership thing, which I'm not apart of... A pretty good NHRL fight from the last event! Taking out the lights. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU2s8ak_dlE SLICK GOKU BABY fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 31, 2022 04:13
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Pretty nice writeup. Nice to know the facility is super awesome too. I'd love to make it out to NHRL at some point, but too far away. Maybe at some point I can move closer to the east coast (instead of in lovely nebraska) and make it to an event.
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Jan 2, 2023 09:01
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I guess Discovery ordered more episodes for this season since now it's an extra 2 months you gotta be subscribed if you're watching via Discovery Plus... Although the benefit to Discovery Plus is that the new episodes go up Thursday morning, so the Thursday night episode is already up. Also a new thing they did this season, Battlebots did the full fight schedule prior to filming. So there's not going to be any teams that only do 2 fights and get in the championship bracket. Not sure how it works with the reserve teams. But in doing so, Battlebots has also released the full fightcard schedule for the entire season. I will wait to post the link to it though since Battlebots is dumb and the results from Episode 1 are also on that page... SLICK GOKU BABY fucked around with this message at 10:41 on Jan 5, 2023 |
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Jan 5, 2023 09:45
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MikeNCR posted:For the fight nights, if a reserve team gets swapped in they take over the schedule of the bot they are replacing. Wow that's actually pretty cool that the stakes are the high for missing an early match.
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Jan 5, 2023 15:39
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RBA Starblade posted:Captain Shrederator seems like they really need to reconsider what they're doing at this point, outside a few good wins they're kind of just easy pickings at this point I don't know really. (Spoilers for the fight) Quantum was an okay Crusher in the 2019 season, a few years to refine the design. And A crusher bot piercing the top armor is pretty much kryptonite for a full body spinner. One puncture in with the teeth, and you're bound to jam up the spinning body to the frame. Captain Shredderator is kind of a lovely bot though that needs a real rework
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Jan 5, 2023 19:43
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oh jay posted:Banners! They even had the Comedy Central champions with the old school Comedy Central logo! I don't recognize Lamachine at the end though, or the symbol above it. https://robotwars.fandom.com/wiki/1995_UK_Open_Competition They didn't get a good shot of it, but pretty sure it's a Robot Wars logo. LA Machine won the 1995 UK Open championship, that turned into Robot Wars. And the bot was built by Greg Munson and Trey Roski (who created and still run Battlebots).
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Jan 6, 2023 07:32
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People forget Gigabyte is sometimes an actual competitor. Don't know much about the new crew running the bot or their experience but they pulled a pretty tough first match, takes a lot to knock out Free Shipping. And likely that was their 1st time actually driving the bot with it spinning. Gigabyte's whole schedule is pretty tough, Bloodsport, Starchild, and End Game. Starchild is a partner bot with Riperoni and is a Huge like bot. Bloodsport and End Game will probably just destroy the poo poo out of Gigabyte... No idea why Captain Shredderator keeps trying though, needs some serious redesign to be at all worthwhile. Also as mentioned before, as the full fight schedule was released at start of filming, Battlebots has also released the whole fight schedule of the season. https://battlebots.com/match-schedule/
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Jan 7, 2023 07:26
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Battlebots should just change the rules to let a Meltybrain spinner compete. I guess currently not eligible because technically there is not an active weapon system since it's all part of the drive... Team Liftoff from NHRL is great fun to watch and they've been doing crazy poo poo with their bot/s. They also have a crazy write up on NHRL's wiki page with all the changes, don't think any of the other NHRL competitors have such a write up. https://wiki.nhrl.io/wiki/index.php/Project_LiftOff Also for fun, this is one of Project Liftoff's fights from NHRL featuring the 3lb Starchild... Which the 250lb version is fighting Overhaul in a few weeks on Battlebots. Also they are the sister team of Riperoni, I guess both bots used mostly interchangeable parts for Battlebots. The builder of Starchild is also the builder of P1 from the previous seasons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2oilmugmZw
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Jan 8, 2023 13:41
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Also slightly unrelated, I'm interested to see how Discovery / Battlebots handles Shreddit Bro (first fight is also in a few weeks, same episode as Starchild above) as they straight up have the NHRL logo on the bot and their shirts. NHRL is of course at least 1 of the "local competitions" they mentioned last week for Jonathan Shultz getting driving practice with Huge, but they decided to just say local competitions instead of giving NHRL the credit they deserve.
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Jan 8, 2023 13:43
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Thursday night fight card.  Emulsifier is another NHRL team. Looks like they went all out on the NHRL branding. Which is cool. 
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Jan 12, 2023 05:43
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Bertha the Toaster posted:I thought they sounded familiar. Also, is that tracked? I love the idea of tracks on robots but I know that realistically they're just a risk and likely to end up broken with your bot floundering with no mobility. It's tracked, but the tracks are at least double belted.
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Jan 12, 2023 14:44
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There's no draws in battlebots.
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Jan 12, 2023 20:16
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Emulsifier-Fusion probably should be I'm surprised at all it was unanimous. Fusion had the most aggression, control, and did the most damage. If Fusion didn't catch on fire, the winner would be pretty drat clear. And Fusion got on fire because it's Fusion and less because of Emulsifier. But Emulsifier lasting the full 3 minutes in it's rookie fight is pretty impressive. Should have a decent rest of the season.
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Jan 13, 2023 05:40
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:I'm Blip and I drive straight into Endgame weapon End Game pretty much didn't let Blip do anything else. End Game deserves it's #1 ranking and has a really good driver and stays squared up to it's opponent. Going to the Judges is pretty much a win against End Game. Only Tantrum went to the judges with End Game last season and only MInotaur was able to knock them out...
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Jan 13, 2023 05:45
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While not making the top 50. They are reserve bots and should have gotten at least 1 fight during filming. And I guess from what Mike posted above, if a bot has to drop out a reserve bot takes it's place for the rest of the fights. From the schedule that Battlebots posted, there is 5 episodes that currently only have 6 fights between the top 50 teams. With the 1st of them being 2/2.
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Jan 13, 2023 11:21
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Bertha the Toaster posted:I know its how they win, but I find it makes watching End Game kind of boring. They just sit in the middle of the arena and wait for their opponent to come to them. Tactically its sound, but visually its just dull. Maybe a little bit, but they mostly lost because their weapon was struggling, likely because it's the 1st time they tried driving with the weapon at full power. And really, Fusion beat the poo poo out of both bots 
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Jan 13, 2023 14:34
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Add a few random pieces of sheet metal in the middle of the arena. Bots without forks might be able to just drive over it, bots with forks can't.
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Jan 14, 2023 15:23
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For real though, the real solution possible, is just a 4ftx4ft steel plate in the middle of the arena would completely gently caress over forks. And allow a bot without a fork the high ground and a place to line up an ambush.
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Jan 14, 2023 19:39
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The fightcard for the week. 
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Jan 18, 2023 22:59
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Madurai posted:Is that not just Deep Six turned Tombstone? Yes.
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Jan 19, 2023 01:27
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It's honestly extremely funny that Battlebots rejected Deep 6's application so they took the same weapon bar and put it horizontal. It's a straight up gently caress You to Battlebots, but also seems like a fun design that will be pretty fun to watch in it's future fights. Even though I don't think Jake Ewert is actually upset with Tantrum for winning their fight (just upset with the judges), it's going to be a real fun fight in a couple weeks... Jake is going to... throw a Tantrum and throw Tantrum all over the box for the entire fight.
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Jan 19, 2023 19:51
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PostNouveau posted:He likes to lean into the villain role so much that I can't tell if he's actually wants to whine about that decision or if he knows it's a good heel play for the cameras. For all the Madcatter guy's attempts at being a wrestling heel, Jake Ewert is much better at it. I think he's at least genuinely thinking he won the fight and upset with the decision. Between the Hydra vs Tantrum fight and Witch Doctor vs Minotaur fight. Those 2 decisions are why this season Mike Jeffries is the match steward and teams can protest a decision and make the judges judge the fight again.
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Jan 20, 2023 05:09
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ante posted:It might have been slightly higher speed, but yeah, compare to Witch Doctor's legitimately high speed stuff, where you can see the whole frame wobbling. Shooting in high speed isn't an easy task and likely not viable for a large arena like the Battlebox.
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Jan 22, 2023 23:12
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The live destruct-a-thon shows start in Las Vegas on the 3rd. Battlebots posted some pics of the army of bots for it, so here they are. Includes Nightmare which is cool.      
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Jan 24, 2023 08:34
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I'm sure they got paid pretty good for the show. Even using cheaper parts it's probably a pretty expensive deal building 5 copies of your Battlebot. Possibly it will change, but the bots in the photos also seem to not have any sponsor decals.
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Jan 24, 2023 14:32
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NHRL is back on Saturday with a new bots only event (probably a lot of kit bots, but also maybe some fun bots). There is 101 3lb bots entered... They are however changing their format this year and there is a placement fight into a single elimination bracket. https://wiki.nhrl.io/wiki/index.php/2023_Tournament_Format
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Jan 24, 2023 18:39
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Fight card for tomorrow! Monsoon and Black Dragon should be a fun fight. Monsoon might be the bot to ruin Black Dragons perfect record of never being knocked out... 
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Jan 25, 2023 15:13
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Horizon is a cool looking bot, but I imagine it will have the same rookie bot blues a lot of teams with unique spinning weapons have and not been able to actually give it a full test run. Team Shreddit Bro has 2 seasons under their belts with the not good Pain Train, I kind of expect they will be able to pull out a win here.PostNouveau posted:ooo, another bot with Huge wheels Yea Starchild is an NHRL based bot and also part of Riperoni's team. Kind of seems like that's the strategy for a lot of teams this year, pairing up with another team.
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Jan 25, 2023 22:09
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Skorpios vs. Jackpot aftermath video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUm5rziwsR4
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Jan 25, 2023 22:48
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Railing Kill posted:Whiplash v. Hypershock could be an amazing fight if Whiplash figured out what happened to their bot in their first fight. The British teams haven't been able to compete the last couple seasons because of Covid. It's why Monsoon & Quantum have also been missing. Beta was able to compete in season 5 in 2020 though. Where they got all the hate for not using their weapon.
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Jan 26, 2023 14:49
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I chalk it up to rookie bot and first time driving in the Battlebox. Not a design that's going to come out and be good in it's first fight, or even season most likely. Although Starchild is at least a bot that they could have driven and tested before Battlebots (unlike Horizon most likely), it's likely on concrete and not steel plates.
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Jan 27, 2023 05:43
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Kraken is pretty much aliexpress sawblaze now. Same design but without the forks to control the opponent. I still like Kraken though, hope they get some wins at least.
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Jan 27, 2023 11:35
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 01:08 |
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Pretty sure they gave Whiplash like the hardest schedule ever. Madcatter, Hypershock, Monsoon, and Tantrum. Only way it could have been harder is if they threw End Game in there... "gently caress you, you get 4 verts!" Also for anyone interested, this should be the link to tomorrows NHRL stream, might change though between the prelim fights and the main stream. Also a nice trailer for NHRL. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB5QtU-uyeM
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Jan 27, 2023 23:26
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