You wouldn’t know it now that I’m an incredibly charming, impossibly handsome, beyond-wealthy auto journalist, but growing up, I was a huge nerd. We’re talking “carried a Palm Pilot in middle school and started reading Tom Clancy in sixth grade” levels of nerd-dom. Unsurprisingly, one of my favorite shows as a kid was BattleBots. They’re robots? And they fight? How could I not fall in love? So imagine how delighted I was to find out that BattleBots is still going strong all these years later.
If you’re a dedicated BattleBots fan, you probably think I’m an idiot for just now noticing this. And maybe I am. In my defense, though, I eventually learned how to talk to girls and more or less forgot about BattleBots until today. What can I say? I don’t regularly look up old shows to see if they’re back. For all I know, Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb brought back X-Play, and I’m missing that, too. I think I may have vaguely registered that ABC revived the show almost a decade ago, but I don’t have cable, and there were more important things to pay attention to in the fall of 2015.
And yet, after all these years, it turns out, BattleBots has been chugging along, doing just fine with or without television coverage. And wouldn’t you know it, they’re also holding their Destruct-A-Thon in Las Vegas on August 30. I already have plans with family that weekend, so I can’t go this year, but I’m already looking at my options for next year. Maybe we can turn it into a family trip? My oldest niece and nephew would be so stoked to go to a robot fight. Either way, I want to make my younger self proud and finally see the competition in person.
If you were also a BattleBots fan as a kid and are worried it won’t feel as awesome anymore, I am also happy to let you know that’s not the case. BattleBots still kicks ass even as an adult. Just check out the highlights from Vengeance in Vegas a couple of months ago. Like I said, it’s still as awesome as it ever was. If you can make it, definitely go and check it out. You might end up regretting some of the things you do in Vegas, but watching the BattleBots Destruct-A-Thon won’t be one of them.
