Inspired by Metric’s Stadium Love - every animal enters the ring, only one leaves.
Rules:
These are normal animals - no radioactive spiders, or rare killer attack rabbits.
These are regular versions of the animals - they can’t be armoured or equipped with tail lasers or anything.
Rules of the universe apply - marine animals are pretty much ruled out because the ring does not contain water and a shark can’t survive out of it (for instance).
Humans are watching, but not participating in this mess (which is usually how these things go down).
That’s about it - my nomination goes to one of the large cats, or perhaps a bear of some type.
So the cougar could take out the bull elephant? FWIW, the elephant can be in musth, just to make things interesting. The cougar can be in whatever state makes a cougar more of a badass.
Poison dart frog, unless a Leimadophis epinephelus gets him before something else gets the snake. Although I guess something could kill the frog but then die from the effort.
I’d go with a rhino. Are we assuming they’ll have an equal amount of aggression/anger? Mental attitude is a BIG part of fighting. A docile rhino might easily lose out to an impassioned dairy cow…
They are just average versions of the animal; however, they can be in hyper-aggressive states, as long as its natural - see musth mentioned previously.
So no Chuck Norris raccoon, just a regular, pissed-off raccoon, for example.
This is a death match - just waiting around for years for all the other animals to die of old age doesn’t really seem in keeping with the spirt of the thing. Also, I think a small frog or bird could eat them.