He did not need to punch the holes into that cheese, there was plenty of air infiltration since there was no pressing and the curd was already extremely broken up...
I have no doubt this works, though I won't be adding this to my own recipe collection.
As a kid we made blue cheese using a mother culture made from other blue cheeses, so the method is sound of course, but just using coagulated milk without rennet results in a very different type of curd and resulting cheese texture for sure.