Ink Master season 9 finale: Will Old Town Ink, Basilica Tattoo, or Black Cobra Tattoo win?
If you’re looking for some interesting historical perspective on this episode, think of things like this: Both Matt O’Baugh of Black Cobra Tattoo and Christian Buckingham of Basilica Tattoo are going to be in the final three, and this means that there’s a 66% chance that one of them is going to be sent home at the same exact spot in which they were sent home previously. WE’re sure that neither of them want that to go down a second time.
Meanwhile, you’ve also got DJ Tambe and Bubba Irwin over on Old Town Ink, and with Bubba this is already a far better finish than his first time on the show. While we understand that DJ is the clear dominant artist on the team, we do think that Bubba has been vastly underrated and has given us some really solid tattoos throughout the season. We’ve picked them to win a while ago, and we’re going to stick with that (although we would really love to see any of these teams win!)
It’s probably even easier to consider Old Town the likely winner when you think for a moment about their story. Even though Bubba doesn’t have that close-but-no-cigar ending story, he and DJ were the first veteran shop to enter the competition and have been there the longest. There were several episodes that Basilica and Black Cobra didn’t appear in; as a matter of fact, you can take this a step further and even say that there are several veteran teams on this season who were eliminated before either one of them ended up showing up. They don’t have the same lengthy journey with this season and some of the other shops, and we do think that the judges may take that into consideration when looking at the overall journey of these shops.
Hopefully, the Ink Master season 9 finale will also include some sort of tease for the upcoming tenth season! The show already has that renewal, but one interesting thing worth noting here is that it will be technically airing on The Paramount Network — which is the new name for Spike once they complete their rebranding. Hopefully, some people out there don’t get confused and miss out on one of the best reality competition shows currently on TV.
Oh, and one more request from all of us here at CarterMatt: Can everyone be judged on their master canvases this year please?
If you head over to the link here, you can see some of our thoughts on the elimination of Unkindness Art, and the one part of this episode that especially rubbed us the wrong way. (Photo: Spike.)