Jordan Devlin vs David Starr (Progress - 5/6/2019)

Cactus nominated their big OTT match from later in the year and I far prefer this so I thought I would give it a nomination and encourage folks to check it out as well. This capped off a tournament that was ultimately a bit of a letdown to me. Progress was - in my estimation - in the middle of a bit of a downturn here, but this match reminded you why SSS16 is awesome and why progress had the reputation they had for producing high quality indy wrestling. 

The match itself felt like a true tournament final. Despite not being as into SSS16 as I had been in years, these two felt like they had gone through hell to get to the final. Their stories were solid.  Devlin had the strongest matches of the weekend and Starr had an extra match thrown in basically because his match with banks was thrown out and they both advanced.  In the match, Starr is really fishing for the lariat to finish it. They know each other really well so their counters are excellent and tease out the drama nicely.

They built the intensity to a crescendo that too often gets overshot in big melodramatic indie matches around this time. This struck the right balance. This probably doesn't have a shot at my list, but it is a match I'd really like to revisit in a few years to see how well it holds up. It could be one that feels better down the road because I think it will stand out of the crowd of 2019 matches.