So recently I have reignited my childhood love of the British TV show Robot Wars, and I want to talk about a particular controversy that's...not really a controversy. Let's talk about why Hypno-Disc didn't win the series 3 championship and instead lost to Chaos 2.

First let's look at the two robots, who were both pioneers in their respective designs. Chaos 2, who won both series 3 and 4, was about 3 seasons ahead of its time when it debuted, boosting both an immensely powerful rear hinged flipper and also excellent driving control.

Hypno-Disc, meanwhile, actually spent a large amount of time careening out of control. It was an untested machine with a huge gyroscopic disc at the front to throw it off...but when that disc connected it caused more damage to robots than the series had seen to that point.

These were unquestionably the two stars of the third series. Hypnodisc's fights with Robogeddon and Stealth are legendary in how badly those robots were destroyed, while Chaos 2 flipped basically everything in it's path.

The rear hinged gas powered flipper and the horizontal spinning disc/bar weapons dominate the sport of robot combat, particularly in the UK, and these two robots are both key in the evolution of these styles, if not the true birth of the modern forms of them.

But these weapon types do have weaknesses. While flippers are great fun to watch and are excellent at controlling fights (and in some cases can cause internal damage due to the impact of the other robot landing), they run on CO2 which is in limited supply on the robot.

This means that flippers get weaker as the match goes on. However, spinners also have the same kind of problem. Because of the incredible force they hit their opponents with, they take brutal recoil themselves, which adds up not only during a battle, but across battles as well.

This is what happened to hypnodisc. For all the damage that it was dishing out, it was taking damage in return, and that damage added up more than could be repaired. The robot's semifinals performance was far more lackluster than it's initial heat because of this.

In the grand final episode, they first faced Steg-O-Saurus, a rambot that just kept coming and coming, and while the disc was causing damage and Hypno-Disc won, the robot was basically limping into the final match.

Chaos 2, meanwhile, basically sent its opponents tumbling while barely taking any damage itself, since in this series roboteers hadn't properly gotten onto the self righting mechanism band wagon.

So the finale wasn't two amazing robots at peak performance, but Chaos 2 at top performance and Hypno-Disc limping into the battle with tons of damage from it's own weapon. That's the thing about the Robot Wars tournament; it isn't just about winning, it's about keeping going.

Now, I love both of these robots. They are both solidly on my top list of favourite robots of all time. If they had met each other at full power...honestly I'd put my money on Chaos 2, due to George Francis' better driving, better control and HD's lack of self righting mechanism.

But at the same time, HD's weapon is so incredible that a single hit could send Chaos 2 to the scrapheap, which I think really would be a shame. The greatest weakness of Chaos 2 was that the team had limited funds to upgrade it, and a totalled machine may have ended their careers

None of this is new to hardcore robot wars fans by the way. Spinners are still known to self destruct, flippers still run out of power and can be ripped apart by spinners, but I've seen quite a few people who were fans as kids talk about how they didn't get how Hypnodisc lost.