In Arena Position 4 - wreathed in green-tinted nitrogen vapour and projecting the sound of mirthless laughter from fore and aft speakers - it’s THE KILLING JOKE!

The challenger, in position 16 - a new Bot from a veteran Operator - In the form of a mailed fist with each finger sporting a different weapon - ALL HAIL THE DARK LORD!

Arena pitmaster - raise the bumpers - this match has NO OUT-OF-BOUNDS!

Operators - READY!

Three! - Two! - One! - ACTIVATE!

The Killing Joke makes the first move, leaping forward with all the power that its nitrogen engine will allow - which isn’t enough as it crashes into The Dark Lord and pushes in vain against that chunky nuclear engine! The Dark Lord will not be moved but those spikes on Killing Joke’s chassis still gouge into its sides, meaning that each bump is going real damage to the exposed set of Pincers on Dark Lord’s first finger! Those pincers aren’t too robust to begin with - will it be enough to knock them out altogether? Maybe in time, but not yet, and there they go, crushing in on Killing Joke and shaking it a bit - for sure, loosening a few bolts -yep, it looks like Killing Joke is Loose!

Wriggling free of the pincers, here now is Killing Joke, working around Dark Lord to find an angle - and there it is! Killing Joke slips a flipper under that expensive Holdfast chassis and flips Dark Lord over! It’s turtled - surely helpless!

Oh, no - look at Brendan’s face in the pits - he’s not sweating! A flip of a switch on the control and the middle finger of that armour-plated fist slowly raises, as the guts of the system - the wheels, the weapons, the armour, everything - quickly invert. Dark Lord was flipped but that ain’t nothing to him - he’s good to go!

Dark Lord quickly scuttles back to get some distance between itself and Killing Joke, but too much gas goes into the retreat and it goes straight into the bumper bars! An almighty flip later and Dark Lord crashes down into position 8, flipped and dinged from the journey! But no - Killing Joke was CHASING Dark Lord and has careened straight into the same bumper barrier! Both bots are extremely lucky that there’s no out of bounds in this match!

Killing Joke has crashed down in position 14, flipped and dented!

Another piece of mysterious mechanism in the Dark Lord switches and a taser springs out of its rear, plugging into Killing Joke’s flipper and jolting it with volts! Killing Joke flips itself upright with the same flipper before getting struck again with that taser, before ploughing once again into the bumper wall - this is doing a lot of damage! - and crashing down in position 6!

That’s too close for comfort for Dark Lord, who retreats a little to position 10, giving Killing Joke an opportunity to right itself using its flipper - which, by the way, it starting to look very jerky what with all the electricity that’s been jolted into it. And here we are again - that taser snaking out to pump yet more shocking energy into that flipper. That’s three hits from the taser, and even with the best insulation most components can’t take much more than that - and Killing Joke is clearly not sufficiently well maintained! The flipper is now hanging limp and useless!

Darknight still has control though, and Killing Joke turns to face in the other direction - what can it have planned? A shot from the taser makes contact with Killing Joke’s axe but Killing Joke has its eyes set on another prize - driving away? At speed? Oh my goodness- straight into the bumpers! The bumpers coil and flip Killing Joke away - straight back to where it came from in position 6! But now it’s flipped and can’t right itself! Dark Lord takes the opportunity to take some cheap shots - three more hits from the taser and that’s Killing Joke’s axe handing limp and useless, the circuitry is fried! Finally some deft work on the control stick gets Killing Joke upright but it must be running out of options?

What’s it is - oh, it’s charging at the bumper walls again!

Boioioing - where does it end up now? Position #9 and it looks VERY badly dented now, as well as being flipped. Dark Lord retreats again, clearly worried that Killing Joke has something up its sleeve, then recommences tasering - two more hits, these aimed at disconnecting the spikes from the chassis of the bot. Killing Joke again rights itself, but then again immediately charges into the bumper walls - and this time it looks terminal - the hard springers flip Killing Joke up and into the air before crashing it down to earth, where the chassis, already loose, completely disengages from the completely defunct motor.

After a hard-fought battle, Dark Lord takes a well-deserved victory lap, which the announcer calls out over the tannoy:

DARK LORD WINS BY TKO!