The Best Of The Best (Maybe?): NXT Announces Its 2019 Award Winners, Including Overall Competitor Of The Year

Polish up the trophies. We are now done with 2019 and that means we get to look back on 2019 in a big way. With so many things having taken place during the year, there are a lot of positives to go over, both as fans and from wrestling companies. The conclusions both sides come to may be rather different, but there are always going to be some interesting discussions to come out of things.

Across the entire wrestling world, there are very few places which have had the kind of success that NXT has seen. The promotion is still the official developmental brand for WWE, but you would not know that by watching them. NXT offers some of the best wrestling in the world by far, which means that their best of the best are worthy of some recognition. They received it this week.

This week’s NXT was a Best Of 2019 edition, including the announcements of the 2019 NXT Awards. These awards are given annually and include things like Male Competitor of the Year, Female Competitor of the Year, Tag Team of the Year, Takeover of the Year, Rivalry of the Year and more. The awards were given out on the show, with each winner receiving a trophy in the shape of a ring bell.

Here are the winners:

* Female Competitor of the Year: Shayna Baszler
* Male Competitor of the Year: Adam Cole
* Overall Competitor of the Year: Adam Cole
* NXT Tag Team of the Year: The Undisputed Era (Kyle O’Reilly & Bobby Fish)
* Rivalry of the Year: Johnny Gargano vs. Adam Cole
* Breakout Star of the Year: Keith Lee
* Future Star of NXT: Dakota Kai
* NXT TakeOver of the Year: NXT Takeover WarGames
* NXT Match of the Year: Adam Cole vs. Johnny Gargano (NXT Takeover: New York)

And of course their speeches. Check out how the winners felt about their awards:

Keith Lee wins Breakout Star of the Year: WWE NXT, Jan. 1, 2020

Opinion: This is the kind of thing that I love to see every single year. The awards really could go in some different directions in multiple categories, though Adam Cole as the Overall Competitor of the Year is kind of hard to argue. What matters most is that NXT is still great and there are no signs of that slowing down whatsoever. The promotion is still on fire and that doesn’t seem likely to stop anytime soon.

Which of these awards makes the most sense? Who would you have picked? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his- Amazon author page with 30 wrestling books. His latest book is KB’s Complete 2004 Monday Night Raw Reviews.

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