Last week, Syfy channel announced the release date of their highly anticipated new show Robot Combat League. The show, which will premiere February 26, finds metal-mouthed robots duking it out in a wrestling ring, à la WWE. But with robots.
The show steals its premise from several places, one being that father/son rom-com Real Steel that came out last year with the singing/dancing robot Hugh Jackman.
According to Syfy:
This extraordinary new series will feature 12 teams consisting of a fighter (a "robo-jockey") and a robotics engineer (a "robo-tech") from myriad backgrounds including a race car driver, an Olympic athlete, a National Guard helicopter pilot along with a mix of professional fighters and software engineers. Each team is paired with its own unique robot and will fight in a first-of-its kind competition using a high-tech exo-suit that translates their movements to their robot. Each fight consists of three rounds of intense action, with the winning team advancing in the competition.
By this description, it's difficult to tell if the robo-techs will be in the ring battling it out with the robo-jockies or if they will be hiding behind a wall of nerdy language and camera close-up confessionals; most likely it is the latter. It would be hard, and pricey, to convince anyone to get in there and man up enough to box a robot, but we would like to see that. There are quite a few people that many of us have in our lives that we may want to throw in the ring with a killer robot; maybe you even have someone like that sitting next to you reading this over your shoulder.
However, given this is television, if "real people" took on the bots, it would have to be some sort of celebrity-style competition, "Robot Boxing with the Stars" or something like that.
Here are a few people we would bet against if they went mano a mano with a steel slugger.
Donald Trump
No one seems to be able to shut this guy the hell up once and for all, so why not see how the Donald can handle his own against 5,000 pounds of cold, hard steel. The only possible way the toupee-wearing millionaire could win is if the robot is not a U.S. citizen and there are robot-birthers out there to lend him a hand.
Megyn Kelly
If pepper spray is "basically a food product," then maybe Ms. Kelly wouldn't mind going up against Liberal Pepper-bot, a robot that is "basically" a robot derivative of a massive Democratic hunk of metal that wants to increase spending on social services programs and kill your first-born.
Rosie the Robot
Who would win in a fight, the sassy, authoritarian robotic housemaid or a massive metallic humanoid? I would guess Rosie too.
Macaulay Culkin
I have nothing at all against Macaulay Culkin; in fact, I kind of like the guy, despite thinking he has officially lost it. I just want to see how much of the old Home Alone spunk Culkin still has. Will he be able to blow some crazy glue and feathers into the robot's infrared night-vision goggles? Can he trick the robot into sticking its metallic arms into a vat of molten-hot lava by putting a tarantula in its battery pack? And will Culkin scream loudly while waving his arms wildly in the air?
Jets Running back John Conner
This fight should happen solely because his name is John Conner, and that's pretty futuristic, like robots boxing is. John Conner could kick a robot's ass.
Ted Nugent
Well, Mr. Nugent, you want small government and hunter's rights? Let's see how you fare in the ring with a ten-foot robot packing a .50 caliber M2 machine gun and no government workers to save your ass. Damn Yankees.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
I don't want to pin Schwarzy against a robot because he committed adultery and ruined a seemingly happy 25-year marriage; everyone makes mistakes...for 15 years. I want the ex-bodybuilder to take on a bot just because it would be a sick fight.
