Las Vegas Street Fight 3
July 13, 2002
Las Vegas, NV, USA
My friend Wayne Cook and I left Friday afternoon after work from Louisville, CO and drove straight out through the night, getting to Las Vegas about 5 AM. We Checked into our motel rested up for three and went over to the mobile home park across the street where our tournament hosts, Diana Snively (Red Blaze) and Ed Robinson (Phoenix Blaze) were setting up for their third Las Vegas Street Fight. It was being setup in the street of the mobile home park, where the manager was gracious to not only allowing the blocking of the street, but also went so far as to provide hot dogs and sodas for all the participants and for any who showed up to watch. Roy Hellen acted as the announcer and to keep the kids entertained.
We were fortunate to check the weather before showing up, and had purchased an EZ-up awning, and a large fan, to combat the 110 degree heat. Wayne and I set up right next to the antweight box and the street arena, and out pit became a favorite oasis for the tornament judges, who would take advantage of our shade while scoring the fights. Unfortunately, the subtle bribe was not not recognized as they voted against us in the fights between Flexy-Flyer and Slam Job. Flexy was suffereing from a set of batteries that wouldn't come to full charge, caused by some previous damage that I was not aware of, and the heat eminating from the tarmac didn't help the situation either. We fought two valiant fights though, as the only only two Heavy weights (Noble Class).
In the Peasant Class (Ant Weight), Jason "Dante' Bardis's identical Lame-O-Inferno and Same-O-Inferno made it to the championship finals, by the skillful piloting of himself and team mate Christian Carlberg. Christian had to leave before the final, and Jason honored me by allowing me to become a temporary team member to take Christian's place. After the exciting match, the judges announced that my, Jason Bardis built, robot Lame-O-Inferno, had won the match! My first Antweight Championship win! (of course Jason got to keep the gold painted bolt trophy as the builder). Thanks, Jason. It was great to be part of your team!
Since I had the only Superheavy weight class robot, in the form of Kumite, sister to Pro-AM, Ed, our illustrious host decided to make an exhibition match between Kumite and his PT-Cruiser (Monkey Boy) which had been used to hassle the smaller bots in the arena, becoming quite the bully. Kumite soundly spanked the monkey, who was complaining of low batteries (I can understand that), but was put in its place after terrorizing and smashing the lightweights. I have to apologize to everyone, for the actions of Kumite for pushing PT-Cruiser through the boundries of the arena, over the curb, across the parking lot and up the grassy knoll. I can only attribute my lack of control to a heatstroke I was having at the time.
I would have had more pictures, but the heat made my camera's battery fail, so we only got 20 pictures. I am hopiung that other contestant will send me what they took or allow me to steal them from their pages.
