Shameless Self Promotion
Shameless Self Promotion
Shameless Self Promotion (a.k.a. SSP) is a Beetleweight control bot designed by Seth Schaffer of Team 'Just 'Cuz Robotics, and the test platform for the SSP Combat Robot Kit. SSP competed in January and March 2023 NHRL events with a V0.9 and V0.95 design of the SSP kit. A version with the same components as the public release of the kit competed in August 2023 reaching the quarterfinals. SSP went onto compete at Bot Brawl in Canada in 2023 and again in 2024 where it placed 3rd, just barely losing out to Caldera. Most recently on June 7th, 2025, the very first SSP 2.0 redesigned copy of the bot competed and went 3-1 with a win over the 3lb current rank 1 bot, Mako.
January 2023 NHRL - New Bot Event
In January NHRL, SSP had a few teething issues but still performed very well with wins over lifter bot Slamson 2Chicken 2Huffin, Peter Bar vertical spinner kit Basado, and in a grudge match Fingertech Beater Sadiq, and losing only a JD split decision against the undercutter Off Beat, despite having disabled Off Beat's spinner and a drive side. The main issue SSP faced was lifter durability in January, but nothing on the whole robot broke except a few bent or damaged screws and the aluminum servo horn.
March 2023 NHRL
With the official announcement of the kit in January and preorders flooding in, SSP needed to get a few upgrades to make the kit even more reliable by March. So a steel replacement servo horn was fitted and a few other minor improvements were implemented. Although 25 kit chassis were already on hand SSP ran with the same exact battle damaged billet UHMW chassis as in January to test the longevity of that component. To help counter beater bars, we turned to RECR.us who waterjet a set of AR600 claw forks to use against beater bars for about $30. A third V0.9 chassis and collection of kit parts with orange TPU was sent to Matthew Lantry to compete at this event as SSP (Shameless Self Advertising). SSA was running the V1.0 motherboard instead of the beta versions but was otherwise the same as SSP. Unfortunately Seth forgot to bring any spare DartBox Dragon drive motors so we had to pray we didn't break any (spoiler - we didn't).
The March event was a ton of fun and SSP went super deep, winning fights against many brutal spinners. SSP continued its breaking undercutter streak, disabling the weapons of Plot Twist and CatTastrophe 2. It managed to outlast Saber for a KO victory and despite a malfunctioning lifter, bullied Blackbird all around the arena for a split JD win. It even got to prove its lifter was overengineered by lifting and shoving 5.4 pound Pawsitively Hissterical around the arena, and accidentally ripping out its battery just before the 3 minute mark. However some gremlins and electrical issues ultimately led to its demise against Apex in the top 16, for an overall 9th place finish among the massive 164 bot field.
May 2023 Bot Brawl
After a few more refinements and changes made to the electronics, SSP also competed at Bot Brawl in Toronto, Canada. This event was an odd test event for Seth as typically he would drive with a ~$160 Radiomaster Zorro transmitter and the drive would be run with a $50 Tarakan dual ESC. For this event Seth chose to run the cheapest setup possible, using the $55 FlySky FS-i6 radio and $25 Budget ESC. While the radio didn't detract from the driving experience much, the ESC certainly was a lot more difficult to get used to as it didn't behave quite the same. Still, SSP was able to beat another kit bot, a D2 kit called Golden Bear in fight 1 easily by sticking it against the wall for a KO. The next match would be far harder, a scary horizontal called Ipsiety in fight 2. The second fight started out well until the bot stopped responding due to an unplugged ESC signal cable. The third fight was against a barely functional meltybrain and a bit of a gimme win for SSP. The fourth was yet another huge challenge, a 4.5lb shuffler horizontal spinner called Come On and Slam with an 18 ounce spinning mass weapon (more than 1 pound!) Despite the odds, SSP managed to tank a bunch of hits, losing its wedge, a wheel, and drive belt, and totaling a chassis, until Come On And Slam had an electrical connection break and died, for another SSP KO win.
Another change of pace was in order for fight 5, facing another well driven control bot in Monster Mash. Monster Mash was a passive fork bot with no lifter, so SSP was able to demonstrate aggression with its weapon. This was close but SSP won the JD. Fight 6 was another horizontal spinner, this time a normal 3lb one similar to a Vector kit called "Why Can't We Be Friends?" Sadly for the opponent SSP was not feeling friendly and bullied them around the arena for another JD win.
Fight 7 was a rematch with Ipsiety, but this time with hot glued connections SSP was unstoppable and this fight was much like the last. The 8th and final fight of the day for SSP was against another 4.5lb shuffler horizontal, this time called Noisemaker with an undercutter. Despite also bullying Noisemaker around and taking no real damage besides losing its lifter fork, SSP was declared the loser, as the judging at Bot Brawl is quite damage focused compared to NHRL. Overall this was a pretty successful stress test and the Budget ESC became a staple of the SSP kits while the WEKA that would ultimately supersede it was in development.
August 2023 NHRL
At this August event NHRL was once again running a standard double elimination tournament, something that changed in 2024. However, the first fight of the day was against Fallout, another lifter control bot with longer forks that consistently won the ground game, giving SSP its first loss immediately. Despite this SSP managed to rack up win after win, fighting all the way into the quarterfinals. SSP managed to beat Crashfest, a golden dumpster winning robot, Half-Life which was driven by the same driver as Fallout, Nitro Hornet which has been competing for many years, and Radix, a really solid undercutter the body of which Seth printed as a 3D print commission from its driver. Sadly its awesome run was put to an end when facing another longer forked control bot in Ratfish. Still, this was by far Seth's best NHRL showing with any bot and the closest to a podium spot he had yet achieved. And all using a stock kitbot with no spinner, and more than a half pound underweight!
May 2024 Bot Brawl
While SSP's alter ego Subtraction was making the rounds at a few other tournaments including the Teams event, Seth opted not to bring SSP to any NHRL events in 2024. However, the Bloodsport team all wanted to head to Toronto yet again, so SSP came along, this time equipped with another Beta electronics setup, an early WEKA dual ESC revision. This ESC handles way better than the Budget could dream of, so Seth was looking forward to a strong showing now that he was no longer playing on hard mode.
At Bot Brawl 2023, the final was between Bloodsport teammates and father son duo Brian and Glenn Boxell. with Eruption and Caldera. As the only Americans at the event, our team was well representing the USA, and we hoped to do it again with the addition of Ellie and her horizontal spinner bot Reputation and Nik's overhead horizontal Phantom III alongside Seth's SSP. This was going to be some serious competition even if it was just against his own team.
In the first round SSP had a bye, so Seth sat by and watched as Reputation's battery was ripped out in one hit by another horizontal called Death Muncher, who then moved on to become SSP's first victim, I mean opponent. Death Muncher had serious spinup problems and SSP was not giving it an inch, for a fairly easy win. Fight 2 would be against Bloodsport teammate Nik with Phantom III. Nik's early strategy was to out-fork SSP's wedge so he didn't spin up his weapon for a bit, giving SSP an opportunity to reach out with the lifter and prop Phantom against the wall. Not wanting an unsportsmanlike easy KO, Seth helped his teammate's bot off the wall, and a real fight ensued as Phantom spun up to a terrifying speed. SSP tanked many hits and shoved Phantom around in an exciting battle but managed to win the JD with both bots leaving fully functional.
Fight 3 pitted undefeated SSP in the winners semifinal against teammate Glenn with the perennial top contender and prior year's finalist Caldera. An extremely unlucky early exchange broke SSP's servo arm and left is stranded upside-down for a pathetic KO loss. Thus began a long path through the loser's bracket.
Fight 4 was a rematch with an upgraded Ipsiety, but it played out much like their meeting in 2023. Next in fight 5 was a fingertech beater bar named PPK with a bright blue livery which had been kicking bot all day. It's streak was ended however when SSP showed it every edge and corner of the arena with force and jammed its lifter into the beater bar to stop it several times.
The fifth and final fight of the event for SSP would be a rematch against Caldera, the loser's semifinal after Caldera lost to Eruption in their first meeting. While SSP didn't get damaged for 2:40 of the fight and bullied Caldera around the whole time, sadly in the final seconds a bad hit to a wheel took out one of SSP's drive sides, costing it the fight. Still, Caldera went on to annihilate Eruption in the finals and SSP was mostly unscathed for 3 minutes proving how incredibly durable it would be, with just the DartBox brushed motors holding it back...
SSP 2.0 Redesign
Seth took a lot of time off from driving SSP in fights as over 200 kits sold were enough to prove that SSP 1.0 was a capable and competitive design, even moving two and a half years past its date of creation. That said, there is always room for improvement, and improvement is what Seth does with all his products when given the chance. So a complete from scratch redesign of SSP was in order to coincide with the launch of Just 'Cuz Robotics newest, smallest, and lightest drive motors, the Blitz Lite 1604 brushless line. SSP 2.0 kits would now have the option of reusing the 1.0 electronics or stepping up to an SSP Pro Brushless edition sporting a stronger, 60% faster lifter servo and the Blitz Lite motors for drive that both enhanced the kit's durability and shaved 0.1 pounds of weight. The Lites are able to tolerate much higher voltage than the DartBox Dragons as well, making them excellent to pair with the SSP kit's newest module, a vertical spinner. The Vert module allowed the Just 'Cuz RDY-5022-Mini hubmotor to spin a small 3 inch blade, adding some real damage potential without sacrificing on the control bot roots for the SSP kit. With these changes yet to be tested in the arena, June was the time to see if Seth's work had gone to waste!
June 2025 NHRL
SSP 2.0 had much to prove, but given it was now no longer an 'active robot' at NHRL since it had not fought in 2024, it entered this event unranked. This led to it being an extremely low seed if it were to enter the bracket. Seth started out the day mostly concerned by his first couple opponents however - first, a rematch from the NHRL Teams event with Trick Or Beater V2. Trick Or Beater V1 fought Seth's bot Subtraction V3 almost exactly 1 year prior and managed to win, so ToB was looking for revenge. However SSP's tried and true claw forks were dominating the ground game the entire match and ToB kept flipping itself over and struggling to self right. A few good shots on SSP caused the PET-CF drive motor mounts to shatter. In the last few seconds SSP lost proper use of both drive sides but was not counted out so it won the JD. Seth had showed up with two copies of the robot that were internally identical save for the modules- one was set with the Vertical Spinner and the other with the standard Lifter and forks. The lifter bot even with fresh motors was struggling to drive consistently due to some unknown gremlins that later turned out to be mostly drive ESC configuration issues. So Seth swapped to the vert bot for fight 2 which had consistently driven better in the test box. Seth was very nervous the drive would stall out again but sooner costing him this next fight against another beater bar in Frogspawn.
Frogspawn turned out to be a great opponent to test out the vertical spinner against. With a consistently much faster tip speed, almost every Weapon on Weapon engagement went SSP's way and SSP was absolutely dominant in this match although it did still go the full 3 minutes.
While SSP was 2-0 going into the bracket it still had the lowest seeing possible with that record which meant it could face a really hard first round opponent. It was impossible to know just how hard though, as SSP now had to face the Rank 1 beetle Mako. In an absolute pedal to the metal driving battle, pins were held, sparks few, wheels were worn, and Seth's improvised Tokyo Drift driving style to avoid head on engagements proved effective. SSP managed to eek out a 9-8 unanimous judges decision win over one of the favorites to win it all.
That said the next matchup wouldn't be easy, a 340mph tip speed horizontal known as Misdirected Aggression. This battle ended up being the most destroyed SSP had ever been coming out of a fight despite still having fully functioning drive. Due to a weird bounce the AR500 wedge was torn off midair and Seth kept smashing SSP's face into MA's fist until at last MA's weapon motor dislodged and SSP came in for lots more pushes and pins. Sadly in the end the damage that SSP's entire front end and lifter suffered were substantial. Still the judging scored 3-3 for damage, and the judges decided MA was more aggressive due to its weapon use throughout the fight. Seth is very proud that his brand new iteration of a tried and true design "didn't suck" and lived up to the unkillable reputation it had earned before. The SSP 2.0 Pro kit is sure to be a force to reckon with at NHRL for years to come.
Statistics
Info
- Rank: #Error: no local variable "rankActive" has been set. in 3lb.
- Last 5 fights: WWWWL
- Current streak: L1 (0 KOs/KO'd)
- Longest winning streak: 5 (2 KOs)
- Longest losing streak: 2 (1 KO'd)
- Avg fight time (seconds): 176.1
Record
| Year | Events | Fights | W | L | % | KOs | KO'd |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | |||||||
| 2020 | |||||||
| 2021 | |||||||
| 2022 | |||||||
| 2023 | 3 | 15 | 11 | 4 | 0.733 | 3 | 1 |
| 2024 | |||||||
| 2025 | |||||||
| All-Time | 3 | 15 | 11 | 4 | 0.733 | 3 | 1 |
Events
| Date | Fought as | Reached | Place | Fights | W | L | KOs | KO'd |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 28, 2023 | Shameless Self Promotion | Round 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | |
| March 18, 2023 | SSP | Round 5 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | |
| August 12, 2023 | Shameless Self Promotion | Quarterfinals | 6 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
Opponents
| Opponent | Fights | W | L | KOs | KO'd | Last Meeting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saber | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | March 18, 2023 |
| Pawsitively Hissterical | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | March 18, 2023 |
| Nitro Hornet | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | August 12, 2023 |
| Blackbird | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | March 18, 2023 |
| Plot Twist | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | March 18, 2023 |
| CAT-tastrophe 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | March 18, 2023 |
| Slamson 2chicken2huffin | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | January 28, 2023 |
| BASADO | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | January 28, 2023 |
| Radix | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | August 12, 2023 |
| Crashfest | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | August 12, 2023 |
| Half-life | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | August 12, 2023 |
| Apex | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | March 18, 2023 |
| Off Beat | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | January 28, 2023 |
| Fallout | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | August 12, 2023 |
| Ratfish | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | August 12, 2023 |
Click "Expand" to see this table.
Full Fight History
* Forfeits before the 2024 season are not counted in a bot's W-L record. Forfeits from 2024 and on are counted in a bot's W-L record.
For more information on how points are calculated for rankings, click here.
Click "Expand" to see this table.
