The Voice’s Sofronio Vasquez took home the win on Tuesday night’s season 26 finale, marking the first win for rookie coach Michael Bublé. He’s shocked, not only because he just won the NBC singing competition, but because he defeated fellow Bublé team member Shye to do it. They were the last two standing.

“When it was down to me and Shye, and Shye is a beast vocalist — again, she’s really great in her music, in her artistry,” Vasquez tells EW, “I really thought that Shye was going to win.”

Both contestants were powerhouses, and Vasquez in particular performed songs from various genres, from Roy Orbison’s “Crying” to “A Million Dreams” from The Greatest Showman movie (below).

Vasquez ultimately triumphed, but the 32-year-old nicknamed “The Filipino Phenom” plans to stay close to Shye, a teen from Bethlehem, Pa., who sang folk-ish songs from Harry Styles and Joan Osborne.

“Me and Shye are just family here,” says Vasquez, a native of Mindanao, Philippines, who now lives in Utica, N.Y. “We are always in shock, even from the playoffs moving to the live shows, like, oh my gosh, we started from 14 down to two for a team play. We are just laughing about it. Yeah. So after this press junket, I’ll get time with Shye. I get to sit down with her later tonight and spend the day, spend the night with her and her family because they are the only family I have here.”

Vasquez mentioned on the NBC series that he was inspired in the competition by the recent loss of his father. Still, he wasn’t sure he could walk away with the “W,” at least at first. It took until the top five contestants were revealed.

“I think the moment that I felt like, I think I can do it, is the first live shows, the results day,” Vasquez says. “For the first week of live shows from top eight to top five, I was the first one to be called in for the finale. So I know that the [finalist] rankings are random, but it’s one way of saying that I’m in the finale, so I’ve got like one out of five chance to win The Voice.”

Then, the moment Vasquez was named the winner, he fell to his knees.

“Wow. The first reaction was shock for sure,” he recalls to EW. “I can clearly remember what I felt during the moment that Carson Daly called my name. It’s just a flashback for all of the dreams that I had in the past. And the first thing that I did was hug my brother in the audience, which Michael Bublé helped me do…and then went to the biggest party ever that I’ve been [to] in America for the first time and that was the wrap party for the show, and it was an awesome experience.”

Just because the competition is over, Vasquez is not saying goodbye to Shye or even his Grammy-winning coach, with whom he truly bonded.

“You know what? It’s so surprising that people would always say, ‘You look so at home with each other. You’re like a family,’” Vasquez says. “But I’m always intimidated by Bublé, and I always called him sir, and he was like, ‘No, stop calling me sir. I’m Michael. I’m just like you.’”

Vasquez notes that his culture uses the term simply as a sign of respect. Whatever he calls his coach, Vasquez classifies working with him as “a dream.”