Ink Master season 9 finale video: Dave Navarro, judges preview big showdown

The Ink Master season 9 finale is coming onto Spike Tuesday night, and Dave Navarro, Oliver Peck, and Chris Nunez are getting set to pick a winner. The three judges find themselves in a difficult spot this season, mostly because they have 3 really great shops competing and no matter who they chose there will be angry fans. Heck, there are probably plenty of people out there still angry that Golden Skull Tattoo and Unkindness Art didn’t make it to the finale.

The video below is a preview of the finale featuring the three judges, as they look back on what has been a very unexpected season of the show. They start things off by talking about what are the two biggest surprises of the entire season.

1. The early elimination of Black Anchor Collective – This shop is well-known all over the world, and they came into the season thinking that these two artists were going to be the runaway favorites to take home the prize at the end. However, the two of them struggled to adapt to some of the rigors of the competition, including the time limit for some of the challenges, and ended up being sent home as a result of it.

2. The exit of Golden Skull – Cleen Rock One is arguably one of the most popular contestants in the show’s history, so to lose both him and Aaron Is before the finale was a huge shock. It’s still a controversial decision to get rid of them looking back on it, but we do also think that it would’ve been strange having a winning shop this season who joined the competition midway through instead of being there since the beginning (although we have that in the finale anyways). The same goes for Empire State Studio, who were also eliminated after just a few episodes.

From here, Chris, Oliver, and Dave all go through the final three shops in Old Town Ink, Black Cobra Tattoo, and Basilica Tattoo in terms of some of what they bring to the table and why they are all really effective at what it is that they do. We can envision scenarios where any of them could win; much of it is going to depend heavily on the creativity that they show with their back pieces, and also how someone is able to fare doing their live tattoo during the finale. This show is going to throw a ton of stuff at them before declaring the winner, so we just hope they are ready. We also hope that they’re ready to handle the intense live environment of the finale, given the fact that this has shown to be a tough crowd in the past. (Remember all of the booing that happened at the live finale last year?)

What do you want to see on the Ink Master season 9 finale, and who do you think the judges will choose?

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