Best of 2014: ‘Ink Master: Rivals’ star Emily Elegado defeats ‘Survivor,’ ‘Bachelor’ alum

We continue to be blown away by the results of the CarterMatt Awards this year. All of our Best of 2014 categories combined have drawn tens of thousands of votes, and above all, it’s been a thrill to see that many TV fans on the site have enjoyed this as much as we have.

Today, we’re announcing the winner of the Best Reality Star category, though we suppose that we spoiled it in the title itself: “Ink Master: Rivals” star Emily Elegado. Thanks to a worthy social media campaign and plenty of fan and family support, she managed to claim the victory in a pretty commanding fashion. She won with around 60% of the vote total, and defeated the likes of Tony Vlachos (“Survivor”), Marquel Martin (“The Bachelor”), and many other big personalities from the past year in reality TV.

What made Emily stand out this year was the combination of talent, on a tattoo-based reality competition show, but also being extremely entertaining at the same time. Sometimes on these sort of shows, it can be very difficult to master both, but she did this without a problem.

2014 has turned out to be a very good year for the entire “Ink Master” franchise in general. It aired two successful seasons (4 and 5) on Spike, the season 5 finale was up significantly in viewers over the season 4 finale, and the show also has its first-ever Christmas and New Year’s Eve specials coming up. Basically, all of these shows have helped to further establish this network as more and more of a go-to place for tattoo-related entertainment.

Oh, and we would not be surprised to see Emily surface on some other Spike series in the future. With a personality this big Spike would be crazy not to bring her back for more.