ohtani's jacket

Good to know. In terms of raw footage, I suppose it's one of the final matches we have of his.

Gilbert Leduc & Jacky Corn vs Der Henker & Le Samourai (6/13/75) Is this Leduc's last TV match? I can't remember off the top of my head. If he indeed retired in 1975 then this must have been one of his final televised matches. He looks pretty spry. This would make an interesting comparison piece to 1970s footage from other Golden Age greats such as Thesz, Gagne and O'Connor. The real MVP, though, was Le Samourai. I don't always praise the character guys as I favor technique over character wrestling, but that dude was always moving about doing something interesting to keep the match fresh. Which was important given the length and the fact that it didn't have the rhythm of a South Style tag match, or even the rhythm of a two-out-of-three falls match. I thought the comedy was fun and the match would have been a slog without it. I was kind of surprised to see Leduc put Der Henker away at the end. I don't know if that had anything to do with his impending retirement, but I didn't expect Henker to stay down for a three count. The other neat thing about this was that it was in color. It was nice to see some of our black and white heroes in living color for a change.

There was one part of the match where he was adjusting something under his chin so I figure it must have been some type of mask, but I don't think it covered his entire head. The lips are cool.

He was a product of the tape trading generation. Didn't he come out of Shawn Michaels' school? If he trained under Regal it was so he could learn stuff he'd seen Regal do on tape. This is kind of an old argument, though. People were making it during the '06 voting. Danielson went on to wrestle for a long time afterwards so I don't know how much of it applies to his early indy work and how much of it is applicable to his entire career. His heel shtick is the most annoying part of his indy work. Ii still maintain that Triple H was a better heel than Danielson. Joe too.

Aledo was crazy good in his prime.

Guy Mercier vs. Kamikaze (Mitsui Dozan - Modesto Aledo) 10/4/71 This was okay. It was only disappointing if you were expecting it to be Mercier vs. Aledo, which it was never intended to be. You've got to admire Aledo's dedication to the gimmick even if it was borderline racist. I spent most of the match trying to figure out how he got his face to look like that. This wasn't the first time we'd seen Kamikaze unmask. The other time was just as creepy.

To the best of my knowledge, there was no cinema at Maison de la Radio. It was the headquarters for RTF for a decade before television and radio were split into two separate organizations in 1974 and then it became the headquarters of Radio France exclusively. I'm fairly certain it's a regular curtain. Not sure what was behind it. Perhaps orchestra seats since it was a concert hall.

More specifically, the old Studio 102.

If it's from Tele-Dimanche, as Matt mentioned in his review, then it was shot at Maison de la Radio in one of its auditoriums.

I should preface my comments by saying that the largest number of Danielson matches I've seen to date have been from the first half of the 00s. I'm currently watching bits and pieces of his heel run in 2006. I like Danielson. I mean, you'd be hard pressed not to. However, I don't get why he was elevated above his peers from the same era. I don't think Danielson was any better than AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Low Ki, or Christopher Daniels, to name some of his fellow indy workers. I get that he was a hero to people the same way that Bret was a hero to me, but when people elevate a guy that high and you don't feel a connection with him then you start to pick holes. The same is true of any wrestler, I suppose, but Danielson struck a particular chord with fans who cared a lot about the wrestling that came after I stopped watching. When I watch Danielson, I see a guy who is highly influenced by the tape trading culture and who pieced together a bunch of cool shit from tapes, but had a hard time selling himself as legit. The other guys I named all feel like true versions of themselves. Danielson feels like a community theater actor at times. Perhaps I don't appreciate the irony of his heel act, but everything he does, someone else did better. It's kind of unfair in a way since the people he borrowed from were working on bigger stages in larger arenas, but it doesn't play that well when you're trying to be Nick Bockwinkel in front of a smart crowd. I wouldn't call myself anti-Danielson. I just wish people would chill out with the hyperbole. I'm also aware that the workers I mention all faded to one extent or another while Danielson had stronger runs in the big leagues. I'm not sure I care all that much about that, though. Some of the TNA stuff that Styles, Joe and Daniels have been doing is clearly better or on par with WWE/AEW Danielson. So yeah, great worker, in the mix, not head and shoulders above anyone.

I don't know why I thought Billy Finlay was Fit Finlay's dad. I'd love to tell you, but it was ten years ago. Thanks for clearing that up for me, though. I was really worried about it.

I'm a non-believer when it comes to Danielson, but he did have some high profile ROH tag matches outside of the WWE stuff.

Le Petit Prince vs. Jacky Richard (11/6/66) Wow, a Petit Prince match. How did this one slip through the cracks? With all the discourse shifting to Twitter these days, you'd think Petit Prince would have blown up more, but alas. This was a fairly simple match, but highlighted the Prince's babyface fire and his awesome selling ability. His wrestling skills were mostly used to tease his opponent before enacting a little revenge, but we saw flashes of what made Prince so amazing. We also received confirmation that Jacky Richard was young once. Richard was always a limited worker but good in his role and that's what you get from the younger Richard. Not one of the Prince's better matches, but he only had a finite amount of matches on television so it's better to not look a gift horse in the mouth.

Speaking of this admin thing, why do we still need to wait for mod approval on posts when the match database clearly isn't a priority anymore?

This was a solid match. I thought it would be more workrate heavy, but there was a nice internal logic to it and they built to the finish with a sense of clarity. As others have mentioned, the execution and crowd heat were strong positives in its favor. I can see why it's overlooked as they didn't ratchet up the selling or near falls towards the end, but not every match needs to be an epic.