This week on the podcast, we invite back to the show (for his third time!) reigning BattleBots champion Paul Ventimiglia!

Bite Force remains the winningest heavyweight combat robot in modern BattleBots history, with three perfect seasons (2015, 2018 and 2019), and just one loss since the reboot—to the unconventional, AI-guided hammerbot Chomp.

Paul enters the 2020 season knowing that the field of bots will likely be the toughest the sport has ever seen. The COVID-19 pandemic gave builders months of extra time to work on their designs and build spare parts. Plus, 2020 will see the reintroduction of the super-heavyweight walker class—notably Chomp, which is expected to return with a 250-pound weight advantage over Bite Force, and a thirst to prove that their first victory wasn’t a fluke.

We check in with Paul to see where he’s at, what he’s thinking about, and ask him the question everyone wants to know: How the heck do you defeat this bot?

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