BattleBots Discovery Season 4

## Overview

**Discovery Season 4** was the fourth season of *BattleBots* since its return to television in 2015, and the second season since Discovery picked the show up from ABC.

Similar to the previous season, the 2019 season of *BattleBots* aired Fridays on Discovery, with an "encore episode" the following Wednesday on the Science Channel, often featuring a bonus fight. The show kept its Fight Night format throughout the season, with the majority of the field of 68 competitors being guaranteed four fights. From then, the selection committee would pick the majority of the Top 16, who fought a single-elimination knockout tournament until a winner was found.

A thirty second trailer was launched to the *BattleBots* YouTube channel in May 2019, showcasing hero shots of several robots, including End Game and Kraken, as Chris Rose hyped up the season to include the largest field of competitors to date. The later snippets of battles focused on different Fight Night battles including SawBlaze vs. ROTATOR, End Game vs. DeathRoll and Quantum vs. Blacksmith as various commentary lines are played. Faruq Tauheed closes the trailer with his iconic "It's robot fighting time!" catchphrase as a couple more fights are teased, before it announces June 7 as the date for the first episode of Discovery Season 4.

The Desperado Tournament made its return, with the mid-season tournament format remaining the same. This was ultimately won by Team Uai!rrior and Black Dragon, who defeated Captain Shrederator, WAR Hawk and fellow Brazilian competitor Minotaur in the Desperado final to win the Giant Bolt trophy and earn a guaranteed spot in the Top 16. Ironically, their 8th seeding put them up against the 2018 Desperado Tournament winner Donald Hutson and Lock-Jaw, but Black Dragon fell at this hurdle and were eliminated from the competition.

Chris Rose, Kenny Florian and Faruq Tauheed once again kept their roles on the show, but FOX Sports broadcaster and sideline reporter Jenny Taft took over pit reporting duties. Neither Alison Haislip nor Jessica Chobot returned to *BattleBots*.

Changes were made to not only the judging criteria ahead of Discovery Season 4, but also the personnel. There were no guest judges for the 2019 season, with the panel being made up of three former *BattleBots* competitors of both the classic and reboot eras: Derek Young of Complete Control, Pressure Drop and Son of Smashy, Jason Bardis of Dr. Inferno Jr., Towering Inferno and The Disk O' Inferno, as well as Lisa Winter of Tentoumushi, Plan X and Mega Tento. The criteria saw a 7 point system split between three categories - 3 points for damage; 2 points for aggression; and 2 points for control.

Death Roll
Whiplash
SawBlaze
Minotaur

The season was again won by Bite Force, built and driven by Paul Ventimiglia of Aptyx Designs. He successfully defended his Giant Nut became a three-time champion in the process - a feat which had only previously been met by Carlo Bertocchini's BioHazard and Tony Buchignani's incredibly successful middleweight, Hazard. Three Giant Bolt awards were also presented to competitors for other categories: the **Founders Award** was won by Jake Ewert and Hydra, whereas the **Most Destructive Robot** was won by Cobalt and the **Best Design Award** was won by Quantum.

## Trivia

* The only drop-out from Discovery Season 4 was Electric Ray, who failed safety checks during filming and was omitted from the 68 total competitors.
	+ Despite not competing, much like the drop-outs from ABC Season 2, Electric Ray is still present on the *BattleBots* website.
* Discovery Season 4 marked the 20th anniversary of *BattleBots* with, up to 2019, the largest field of robots in the reboot era to date.
* Discovery Season 4 marked the final appearance of Nightmare, who was effectively retired after losing its exhibition match to Mammoth.