The Little Prince! Or the Small Prince, maybe! I've seen two Petit Prince matches now and on both occasions he's looked like one of the most spectacular wrestlers ever. Sometimes you don't need a four-hour comp tape of someone to know, you know? This was like Tiger Mask or Rey Jr in their pomp, where they were just doing stuff that nobody else was really capable of. Except Prince was doing it in fucking 1966 with even more speed. Imagine how mind-bending Rey Misterio Jr. on fast forward would be and that is Le Petit Prince. This seems to be the earliest Prince footage we have so I'm guessing he wasn't very deep into his career. His performance was a little more about the flash here. I don't know why it reminded me of a young Atlantis, but it did and I was getting some Atlantis v Satanico from '84 vibes, a young tecnico still finding himself against a rudo who would outright jump on his head if given the chance. I thought Genele was an excellent base for Prince and he sure got surly when he needed to. Initially that entailed him keeping Prince grounded with nasty wrist locks and armbars, then it evolved into kicking the wee fella in the chest and eventually stomping his ears into the canvas. Prince would try and take him over with big snapmares and Genele would just hold onto the ropes, refusing to be shown up by a gymnast. In the back half of the match Prince had had enough and started to retaliate, sometimes by clubbing Genele in the head while perched up on his shoulders. There was also the sense that Prince's evasiveness would win out no matter how rugged Genele got. At one point Prince flipped or spun or SPRUNG out of a hold and Genele tried to clothesline him clean in the face, so Prince turned into it and took him over with an armdrag, the sort of counter that looks wholly necessary on Prince's part, one not telegraphed or half-arsed even remotely on Genele's. It built to both of them getting bounced out the ring and when Prince gathered momentum on the rope running sequence there was an inevitability about what was coming. This was awesome stuff.
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