So it has come to this: The final battle between good and evil; Batman and the Joker; God and Amalek. The contestants stand across from each other in the Wild West town square of cosmic war, and the requisite cries of “Who the Hell do you think I am?” are uttered.

At long last, the two greatest fast-food restaurants in the Amherst area stand face-to-face and settle, once and for all, who’s the greatest ­– Wings over Amherst or Antonio’s Pizza. I think I can say, surely and simply, that the prize must go to Wings. Of course, I have to prove this to my readers, and have no choice but to voice a few unpleasant truths that many might not want to hear about the society and world we live in; however, I feel it my utmost moral duty to enlighten everyone.

First of all, Wings must win because Antonio’s is the pizza of the infidel, who will drown in their own blood for eating it. The pizza place that suddenly must not be named insists on not producing any kind of pizza or slice, except by special order, with any less than three to five toppings on it, one of which is somehow always a salad dressing. They also use very little tomato sauce and a hard, thick crust. This is the Massachusetts Lovecraftian Abomination, an unacceptable deviation from the true New York City way of thin, foldable or cracker crusts with lots of fruity tomato sauce, spices and only one or two toppings. This combination allows the eater to enjoy the subtlety and richness of simple, well-made pizza, while the Massachusetts Abomination tries to cover its fundamental inadequacy in meats and dressings. To be quite frank, if you want bread covered in meat, salad dressing and some vegetables ­– without proper tomato sauce or mozzarella cheese – you can leave Antonio’s with your soul intact, walk right into Moti’s next door, and just get shawarma. If, on the other hand, you want proper pizza, I recommend visiting the Berkshire Dining Common or simply taking a trip down to New York City or New Jersey.

In contrast, Wings improved Buffalo, New York’s base product. Buffalo wings were originally meant to have a single flavor of sauce, the hot-sauce-and-butter flavor, fried onto actual wings and legs of chicken – complete with bones and cartilage. Thanks to innovative wings places such as Wings over Amherst, we can get “wings” that don’t actually consist of anything but tasty, delicious meat, with a choice of dozens of sauce flavors and five different “hot” intensities of the original buffalo goodness. Some of them aren’t even spicy, allowing us to get wings for friends who don’t like or actively hate hot-pepper flavors. Wings even delivers to anywhere in the Amherst area and the UMass campus until one in the morning Sunday through Wednesday, until 2:00 a.m. on Thursdays and until 2:30 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Antonio’s doesn’t deliver at all except for large orders.

Speaking of delivery, we ought to consider the methods by which one orders the truly righteous junk food. To order Antonio’s, one must actually visit the shop, or at least place a phone call ahead of time. To order Wings, all you have to do is place a phone call or, as of this semester, order online from their website. Yes, you read that correctly: You can now order delivery with no more effort than it takes to order books from Amazon.com, or find any of the other things so common on the Internet. The future is now, and the future eats Wings over Amherst.

Of course, many have been seduced by the Great Moldy Ones’ propaganda, and will protest that Antonio’s can at least put up a fight in price. After all, a slice only costs a couple of dollars, whereas Wings costs at least $10, right? Well, no. That $10 actually buys enough wings for two people, yielding a per-person price of $5. That’s less than it costs to buy a couple of slices at Antonio’s, let alone a solid meat meal. There are children starving in Sudan, India and China who would kill for a whole meat meal, and Antonio’s seriously proposes that we behave so decadently as to pay extra for less food that’s of lesser quality? I seriously propose that Antonio’s take a hike.

I suppose that tastes differ, and some might actually enjoy the eldritch quality of Antonio’s.

Even so, we should consider the origins of each restaurant. According to their website, Wings “started in Amherst, Massachusetts, September of 1998, at the University of Massachusetts. Masterminded by Patrick Daly and Harold Tramazzo with the intent to deliver high quality, yet simple food to college students for a fair amount of money. It caught on like hotcakes and we haven’t looked back since.”

Antonio’s may very well be a local establishment, but it’s owned by townies. These people constantly attempt to criminalize our mere existence as students. Why should we pay for their food instead of buying our food from UMass students like ourselves? This moral stand requires neither doing the impossible nor seeing the invisible. The only proper way to transform raw ingredients into delicious, cheap food, while subsequently “fighting the power” and standing for our rights as students is to boycott Antonio’s, and order junk food from UMass fellows at Wings over Amherst.

Overall, I think Antonio’s should just give up. They can’t possibly be better, as food and for students, than God’s chosen junk food: Wings over Amherst.

Eli Gottlieb is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].