NXT: Predicting the 2019 Year-End Award winners

Rhea Ripley WWE SmackDown
Rhea Ripley WWE SmackDown /
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Female Competitor/Breakout Star of the Year: Rhea Ripley

If you go by kayfabe accomplishments for the full year, now-former NXT Women’s Champion Shayna Baszler should comfortably win this award. If you go by unbridled excellence in every facet of pro wrestling, then Io Shirai is your woman.

But since WWE fans tend to check the boxes next to a babyface’s name for these ballots, we will probably see Rhea Ripley snag this one. Don’t get me wrong, picking Ripley for this honor makes more than enough sense.

Aside from the aforementioned heels, Ripley has received the sturdiest push of the other nominees, as Bianca Belair has sat in stasis since tapping to Baszler at NXT TakeOver: New York and, with all due respect to Toni Storm and NXT UK Women’s Champ Kay Lee Ray, the distaff division in NXT’s European spinoff hasn’t received nearly as much care as the one in the US.

Setting aside the recency bias that will likely play into the final tally – Ripley beat Baszler for the title two weeks ago in one of the most memorable moments in that show’s history – Ripley has also scored plenty of other hallmark wins over the likes of Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks that felt more like a natural progression in her ascension to the top of the NXT women’s ranks than another example of WWE putting the spotlight on a protagonist far too soon.

You can count on one hand how often that has happened in the company’s nearly 70-year history.

For those reasons, it’s more than conceivable that Ripley will win this award as well as the Breakout Star trophy. Few have transitioned from top heel to top babyface as seamlessly as Ripley has, and it’s a testament to her rapid growth as a performer over the last year.