Sometimes the debut of a new act or attraction in Las Vegas seems to mark the beginning of an era. Celine Dion’s residency at the Colosseum, the High Roller observation wheel and the fountains at Bellagio are a few examples of game-changing additions to Strip culture that helped accelerate its evolution. The Feb. 22 premiere of BattleBots: Destruct-A-Thon at the new BattleBots Arena in Caesars Entertainment Studios behind Horseshoe Las Vegas (formerly Bally’s) heralds a new direction in a city that’s long been a place where titans of combat sports clash. Welcome to the age of mechanical martial arts.
BattleBots is hardly new. BattleBots World Championship matches have already taken place in Vegas, and a BattleBots show debuted on Comedy Central in 2000. The show was revived in the late 2010s and is now broadcast on the Discovery Channel. Interest in building robots for combat grew to the point where there could be a dedicated venue in the city of neon, but there’s more going on than machine mayhem.
“The vision has always been to create worldwide support for robot combat,” said BattleBots co-founder Greg Munson during a pre-event Red and Blue Carpet in the studio lobby. “That’s what BattleBots is. That’s what we’ve been doing on our television show, first in the Comedy Central era, then in the Discovery Channel era. So, we’re taking robot builders from all over the world, putting them into a tournament-style structure, and letting them fight and see who the winner is … That is the sport and we are the leader of that across the world.”
Destruct-A-Thon, said Munson, is a nightly showcase of that sport featuring the best of the best from both television network eras plus some never-before-seen contenders.
“The whole point is to let them fight, have fun and kick some bot for the audience,” he said. “And then every year, we’ll do a two-week shoot for the TV show, and that’s when all the robots from all around the world come here.”
Essentially Munson, BattleBots co-founder and CEO Trey Roski and their crew have created a destination for burgeoning bot enthusiasts, and fans of the show can now see contraption carnage in person while visiting Vegas. Destruct-A-Thon competitors on hand for the premiere included Witch Doctor, Kraken, Overkill, Tazbot and Whiplash. Watching an unassuming robot repeatedly flip a much larger, more dangerous looking opponent into the air is as adrenalizing as a good MMA fight.
A lot of the energy in BattleBots Arena generates from the enthusiastic builder teams, with friendly taunts and audience interactions adding to the electric atmosphere, but it was Roski’s introduction at the beginning of Destruct-A-Thon that set the tone.
“The purpose is to influence kids to put down their iPads and to build something fun,” he said, getting an enthusiastic response from the audience. “We want to make heroes out of smart people. The best athletes and golfers are not the people who will save the world, but the next BattleBot contestant might.”
Caesars Entertainment Studios at Horseshoe Las Vegas, ticketmaster.com
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