Knee-Breaker's story actually started while I was designing Toe-Crusher. I originally designed Toe-Crusher to not only deliver overhead crushing blows but to also spin around for a sledge-hammer type attack. Well, the spin attack requires a heavy weight at the end of the stick while the overhead attack requires a light weight to be effective. I couldn't find a good balance, so I just went with the light weight and abandoned the spinning attach. However, I stashed the idea for latter building.

About a month before the Long-Beach event I was busy with Trey's Traps (see the story of The BattleBox Traps) and in between scrambling to finish Slugger. I noticed there was very little competition in the MegaBot (100 lb) weight class. If I built a reliable, simple robot like Toe-Crusher I had a good chance of winning. Problem was, I had no time. So I contacted my buddy, Clint Lynch. Clint is a talented industrial designer and illustrator with plenty of machine knowledge. I also knew that he wanted to build and operate a robot. I had the parts and the design, he had the hands and the time. It was a great arrangement.

So I spent my last three weeks finishing up the Traps and Slugger (aka Bad-Boy), while feeding Clint materials and drawings. It was cutting it close but looked like we'd make it. Then we had a set-back. The order I placed with Northern for tires did not come in as scheduled and was accidentally cancelled. Clint took a trip to visit Dan Danknick of Team Delta to pick up his spare tires. It actually turned out well because we also got some of Dan's carbon-fiber panels, which later served as Knee-Breakers armor.

The last week was a major blur of activity. I took the week off from work to install the traps into the BattleBox. With the traps out of the way I could concentrate on Knee-Breaker and Slugger.

It came down to the wire -one night left to finish both Knee Breaker and Slugger. I made a decision to shelve Slugger and help Clint with Knee Breaker; specifically I wired it up and we tested it a bit. It was pretty cool turning a robot around in two weeks.

We got to the Long Beach event on a minimal amount of sleep. Luke Khanlian met us there as well as my camera guy, Keith Adler. We got set up and prepared for the fights.

Some of our fights were good, and some lucky, and we managed to walk away with second place. I had done everything you're not suppose to do to build a robot. I didn't

1. Build well in advance

2. Test, test, test

3. Practice driving it.

I won for a few simple reason; I had experience building robots, I picked the right fight to be in (the MegaBots), and I was lucky.