No Holds Barred: Chris Jericho and Mark Setrakian on Robot Combat League Conference Call

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman presents the unedited and complete audio from the February 14 media conference call for the Robot Combat League (http://www.syfy.com/robotcombatleague).

The Robot Combat League features 12 state-of-the-art robots engaged in a tournament where they fight each other. The robots are controlled by a human fighter known as a robo-jockey and an engineer known as a robo-tech. The first season of the Robot Combat League, which premieres Tuesday, February 26, on Syfy in the U.S., has already been filmed. There will be nine weekly episodes of the Robot Combat League for this debut season. Two of the 12 robo-jockeys, Andrew Montanez and Amanda Lucas, are professional MMA fighters.

The main speakers on this conference call were WWE performer Chris Jericho, who hosts the show, and robotics expert Mark Setrakian, who designed and created these robots.

The question, of course, which comes to mind for those in the combat sports, is whether or not some day, like in the fictional movie "Real Steel", robot fighting can become sophisticated and popular enough to replace human combat sports.

Asked about this on this conference call, Mark Setrakian replied, "As a culture, we don't lose sports. We add sports to our repertoire. So I think robot combat is a new sport that's going to be added to what humans do. I don't think boxing or wrestling or any of those things are going to go away."

The discussion on the conference call also focused on many details of this new show, and provided a lot of answers as to what to expect when it debuts February 26.

You can play or download No Holds Barred at http://nhbnews.podomatic.com/entry/2013-02-15T21_04_13-08_00 and http://archive.org/details/NoHoldsBarredChrisJerichoAndMarkSetrakianOnRobotCombatLeague. If one link does not work, please try another.

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The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer by Ian Snow(http://magicpumpkinstudios.com).

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"The Martist" with John Perretti (http://johnperretti.com). A "martist" is an artist as well as a martial artist. This is a blog for those who think about fighting, published by John Perretti, the lifelong martial artist and former UFC and Battlecade Extreme Fighting matchmaker. Check out John's writings at http://johnperretti.com (http://johnperretti.com).

MMA World Expo (http://www.mmaworldexpo.com). The mixed martial arts community comes to New York City February 16 and 17, 2013, for the fourth annual MMA World Expo, featuring an amateur MMA tournament, grappling, MMA fighters, seminars with world-class trainers, vendors, panel discussions, and much more. The MMA World Expo takes place Saturday, February 16, and Sunday, February 17, 2013, at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. For more information, go to (http://www.mmaworldexpo.com).

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Thanks, Eddie Goldman http://eddiegoldman.com