Bullfighter

**Bullfighter** (Chinese:**斗牛士**, romanized as **Dòuniú shì**, also translated as **The Matador** or simply **Matador**) is a Chinese robot which took part in *King of Bots II*, and was the successor to EarthShaker, which had competed in Season 1 of *King of Bots* and the one-off season of *This is Fighting Robots*. It was not initially selected by any celebrity captains in the first round, and Bullfighter was relegated to the redemption rounds, where it suffered an internal fire and lost to Mist Lion, despite helping the Mist Lion team repair their robot before the battle.

## Design

Much like EarthShaker before it, Bullfighter is a lengthy four-wheel driven robot armed with a powerful flipping arm in the center of the machine. Unlike its predecessor, the full-pressure flipper in the center of Bullfighter was a four-bar flipper, likely inspired by Lucky from *RoboGames* and *BattleBots*, firing the entire mass of the flipper forward and out of the robot via central bars. This flipper could throw robots high into the air and also allow Bullfighter to self-right, at the cost of a slow retract time. Bullfighter differs from EarthShaker due to its protected wheels and gold color scheme.

## Robot History

### King of Bots II (Season 2)

Bullfighter was not selected by any celebrities during the opening round of battles, and so it was immediately relegated to the redemption rounds. Here it fought Mist Lion, which was initially suffering from radio reception issues, but Wang Cheng helped to fix Mist Lion's issues inside the arena, keen to fight a battle rather than win by forfeit, and the battle commenced.

"*I love this so much, this is what this is about.*"
— Emma Dumont on the sportsmanship of both teams

At the start of the fight, Bullfighter shot across the arena to tackle Mist Lion, which was not spinning its drum. This allowed Bullfighter to catch Mist Lion side-on, and used its four-bar flipper to throw Mist Lion into the wall. Mist Lion landed upside-down, and meandered over to Bullfighter on its back wheels, with Bullfighter missing its flip. Mist Lion finally powered up its spinning drum, although Bullfighter completed another lift on Mist Lion from a side-on attack, not quite turning it back over. Bullfighter followed this up by charging Mist Lion into the arena wall, where it briefly became stuck on one of its castors, although it managed to escape.

Mist Lion backed into Bullfighter again, posing no threat, and then drove into the Grinder in an effort to self-right, but was simply deflected by the arena hazard. Bullfighter responded by driving under the back of Mist Lion to launch it back into the Grinder, although this powerful flip did put Mist Lion back on its right-side up. Bullfighter's next flip was tentative, only propping Mist Lion up briefly, suggesting a decline in Bullfighter's flipper power. Mist Lion started to briefly suffer from radio reception issues again, outputting little movement and failing to spin its drum until Bullfighter caught up to it.

At the moment when the two robots reunited, Mist Lion's drum started spinning again, and Bullfighter fired its flipper randomly, allowing Mist Lion to take advantage and deliver a hit to Bullfighter's side using its drum. Bullfighter had also started lightly smoking due to an overheating drive motor, and as a result, Bullfighter ground to a halt near a Grinder. Smoke started pouring out of Bullfighter from a vent in the top, and the referee counted out the immobile machine while the suddenly victorious Mist Lion kept its distance. As a result, Bullfighter was eliminated from the competition after just one fight.

"*From the video it said the gear reduction for drivetrain was a bit too high and overly stressed the motor, then it finally burnt out.*"
— Thomas Lau on Bullfighter's cause of immobility

## Results

### Wins/Losses

* Wins: 0
* Losses: 1

## Trivia

* Although he was not present on the televised team, Bullfighter was built by Thomas Lau, who originally created EarthShaker among other robots loaned to other teams, such as Mighty Crossbow and Steel Shield.

## References

1. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/100013035614671/videos/695955277515653/