An intense series of BattleBots-style cage matches can now be found on Twitch. Appearing on the streaming platform in October, "RobotConflict" is a channel that is dedicated to bringing people glorious mechanized fights. RobotConflict recently livestreamed the fights from Motorama Robot Conflict 2020 – a double-elimination tournament held in Harrisburg, PA.
In the channel's most viewed clip, a bot by the name of "Knock Off White" was able to cause a merciless knockout by way of battery puncture. Just 30 seconds into the fight, the larger robot's intimidating melee weapon was able to deliver the killing blow; The conflict ended with Knock Off White leaving its opponent, "Botceps," in a smoking, leaking ruin.
This wasn't the first time Knock Off White was able to cause a battery leak, either.
Just like fans love to see knockouts in events liken to the UFC, Motorama fans quickly took a liking to Knock Off White's ability to finish its opponents with brute force. Although Motorama 2020 doesn't have Bruce Buffer, their commentators did a decent job creating a WWE-esque vibe during the fights.
For those unfamiliar, BattleBots is truly where robot combat was taken to the mainstream, having a short but successful run from 2000-2002 on Comedy Central. The show drew inspiration from other cage match sports, namely boxing, and drew in impressive viewership. Eventually, the show was dropped by Comedy Central after its 5th season.
However, there was a celebrated resurgence of the series in 2015 and the show has continued to run in various forms ever since, currently housed by Discovery and Science Channel.
Still alive and well, a new season has been announced with tickets for the live show currently available for purchase.
Regardless, the Twitch channel RobotConflict looks to be a haven for BattleBot fans who have a hunger for both free and live robo-duels. It doesn't seem to have a huge amount of followers on the platform as of now, but seeing that it's top clip from Motorama 2020 gathered almost 10,000 views, it would be unsurprising to witness its rapid growth following future streams. Overall, seeing Twitch's content become more diverse is pretty cool – especially when that diversity involves epic robot cage matches.