After a two-year hiatus, the WWE NXT Year-End Awards returned this year, allowing fans to vote for award winners across five separate categories: Match Of The Year, Male Superstar Of The Year, Female Superstar Of The Year, Tag Team Of The Year, and Moment Of The Year. The awards last took place back in 2020 when the likes of Adam Cole, Io Shirai, Austin Theory, and Shotzi Blackheart all walked away with individual awards.
Over the last week, voting has been open to fans, a prospect that’s likely to be taken seriously by the company as former WWE creative team member Robert Karpeles noted on Rumor & Innuendo last week that WWE does not fix votes when they are open to the public.
During last night’s edition of NXT, the results were made official and the award winners were crowned. NXT Champion Ilja Dragunov was the most accomplished winner on the night, walking away with both the Male Superstar Of The Year award as well as winning the Match of the Year award alongside Carmelo Hayes through their NXT Championship match at NXT No Mercy.
In the process, Dragunov also becomes only the tenth superstar in history to win multiple NXT Year-End Awards in the same year. Current WWE Women’s Champion IYO SKY and Kairi Sane are the only women to have achieved the honor while Dragunov follows in the footsteps of Finn Balor, Shinsuke Nakamura, Cash Wheeler, Dax Harwood, Malakai Black, Tommaso Ciampa, and Adam Cole on the men’s side of things.
The only other active NXT star to win an award was Tiffany Stratton who won the Female Superstar of the Year award. The other two awards went to The Undertaker, who achieved the Moment of the Year award thanks to his surprise appearance on the October 10th edition of NXT, and The Creed Brothers, who were crowned Tag Team of the Year despite moving to the Raw roster last month.