When FSM originally profiled Kendo Nagasaki for the Greetings Grapple Fans series, he became the only living subject we did not interview. At the time he was continuing a life-long policy of not merely protecting the character but literally maintaining a silence when it came to speaking on his career. Now he has chosen to break that silence.
Peter Thornley, the man behind Nagasaki, has now published an autobiography titled Kendo Nagasaki and the Man Behind the Mask. The book is a fundraiser for the Lee Rigby KNFoundation, a charity set up to assist former armed force members and their families in memory of the soldier murdered by terrorists in London. Speaking to FSM, Thornley says writing openly about his life was a necessity.
“It wasn’t an easy decision until I met [Rigby’s mother] Lynn and wanted to do more for the foundation, so to write my story or you might say Kendo’s story, I’ve got to cover the whole spectrum. I just couldn’t talk about the character of Kendo Nagasaki: it had to be more in depth and a lot more about me than had been previously published. I’ve reached that stage now where I’m 77 and if I don’t really do it now, I never will.”
He also noted that the book was a chance to correct several misconceptions about his life, some of which may have been sparked by the mystery around his character as much as malice. “People do make things up: they get little bits of fact and try to join them together with their own idea of what they’d like to think is the truth.”
The book is full of revelations from the opening page when we learn Thornley was not his birth name. Perhaps the biggest surprise for wrestling fans is that his career as a masked wrestler on television nearly ended before it had got going. He had originally agreed with a promoter plan to unmask on just his third appearance.
“My intention was to do it, I’d already committed to do it and of course when I went to [Joint Promotions’] monthly meeting in Leeds with the mafia dons, as you might say, I thought we were in total agreement what they wanted.”
That proved not to be the case. Norman Morrell, one of the leading Joint Promotions members, phoned Thornley and simply said “I don’t think Kendo would be Kendo without the mask” before hanging up. With a seed of doubt sowed, Nagasaki asked mentor Geoff ‘Count Bartelli’ Condliffe for advice and was told to discuss the issue with local promoter Jack Atheron.
“He wasn’t one of the core members of Joint Promotions, but he was one of the real old time promoters and he had a sort of insight to Joint Promotions that perhaps other people didn’t have. And he said to me, ‘What Norman says, take it from me, you know, you’ll get away with it.’ Because I’d thought if I did anything silly like that, I’d get marginalized.”
Instead Thornley refused on the night to unmask, a decision that in hindsight proved a wise one. “I’m glad I didn’t, let’s put it that way! I mean, to be honest, it was never even discussed who I’d be after I took the mask off. George Relwyskow was the guy that really wanted it and when that mask came off, I don’t know whether I’d still be Kendo Nagasaki. Looking back on it, the plan sort of ended [with] ‘let’s get the mask off.’
“I think Relwyskow wanted me to be a super baby face because he’d heard about this thing in Scotland. I did a job [unmasked] for Andy Robbins. I appeared as Paul Dillon for one show, and that’s the only time I ever did in this country, to put Andy over for the Commonwealth championship. I never did it again. And [Relwyskow] felt I’d be better at that than what I was doing. But of course all the other people had different ideas, ie Norman Morell who was a more powerful man in Joint Promotions than he was.”
The book also reveals Thornley’s extensive time training in catch wrestling at the infamous Snake Pit in Wigan. He notes to FSM that “One only uses [submission] wrestling when you want to put somebody in their places you might say. You only use what you would call submission wrestling if somebody decides they’re going to be awkward with you.”
Such skills did prove useful at the start of his career when promoters wanted to push the masked character to a far greater degree than your typical rookie, including overcoming veterans. “My biggest problem was with the old guys. I’m only 22, 23 and if I had gone in as Peter Thornley and I gone on with Jim Hussey… Well, I probably wouldn’t go on with Jim Hussey in my first few matches to start with and if I did, Jim Hussey will probably be beating me as a newcomer in this business.
“So I was in a unique position. I came in with a mask and unknown from the public’s point of view, but some of the wrestlers knew I was this 22 year old who was green as grass as far as show wrestling was concerned, but they got a rumour that I’ve been to Wigan and that buzz went round. A lot of the old timers thought ‘Well, we’ll try him’ and a lot of that went on but I turned out to be a lot better than they thought I was.
“My early career was based on fighting my way up the ladder and making sure that I even got a bit of the show because these old timers would steal a bit of the show off like you wouldn’t believe. Geoff Portz and Dennis Mitchell, people like that were show-nickers: if you went in and you weren’t prepared to force your hand a little bit, you wouldn’t get anything. You’d come out of there and you’d done nothing except got your hand up at the end perhaps if you were lucky.
“So for the first year and a half of my career I was sort of building up a reputation and Jack Atherton used to feed me occasionally with lads that he thought we weren’t going anywhere and let me loose on them so that I could establish myself as you might say. And he used to give me extra few quid if I had a bit of blood flowing.
“So then I got over this first year and a half when I was not really in with the top lads so much. They kept me away from them and then I got entered into tag matches with Count Bartelli to quiet me down because I got a bit of a reputation of being dangerous to be honest. Geoff’s job was to sort of drag me out of there if I was getting a bit too ambitious and that worked well because that gave me a bit of an inroad into the show business [side] where the top lads like Steve Viedor and people like that were starting to trust me and I could get in with them and they didn’t not to expect me to do anything silly.”
“Then I got calmed down a bit and I realized that, you know, you’ve got to earn a living out of this business, you can’t go on like I was. So I calmed down a bit and then sort of got introduced into more and more of the top guys. And then as time goes on with Kendo Nagasaki, of course it becomes a 100 percent show. When I came back the second time (in 1986), we used all the gimmicks you can think of, throwing salt and talking to ancestors and doing all these things. That was total gimmick, wasn’t it?”
Thornley notes that even as his in-ring style evolved, his reputation still preceded him, causing some wariness that may not have been justified. “Those reputations last, they don’t die. You’re not as capable when you’re 36, 40 years as you were when you were 26. You’re not but your reputation still is there and people are still a bit wary – ‘Is he as good as he was?’ and some might try you out but a lot don’t. You can’t keep that edge. I don’t care who you are or how good you were you. If you’re going to be what you might call [real] wrestling fit, you can’t be on the road traveling up and down the country and keep that edge. You can have the skill and the knowledge, but if you get somebody younger with that same skill and knowledge, you’ve not got a cat in hell’s chance.”
While the voluntary unmasking of Nagasaki in 1977 was perhaps his most memorable career moment, he was gone from the public eye just a matter of months later, concentrating on building a music management business with his wrestling ‘manager’ George Gillette. “I didn’t do that many shows [after the unmasking] because I was easing in to formulating the character really and seeing how it all worked without the mask. And then I decided to retire because I could see Max and Shirley Crabtree were going to be the dominating force in Joint Promotions and I had a meeting with Max and he more or less told me that he couldn’t work with me because I was becoming too self-important. And I thought ‘the writing’s on the wall.’”
The disagreement followed on from a TV angle where Crabtree – now Big Daddy – had pulled Nagasaki’s mask off. “I didn’t want to be involved with putting Shirley over anymore to be honest, because I really made Shirley Crabtree. I gave him the kickstart that he needed when I did that unmasking the television. I made him look like this guy that I was running away from and it was good for him. It wasn’t so good for Kendo to be honest. I did it and that was gaining more and more momentum and I thought I’ve got to step away from this because it’s not doing me any good.’”
While Thornley had initially considered a run as an unmasked babyface, a second conversation with Max Crabtree made him realise he would never be a top priority. “If Max is going to build anybody he’s going to build his brother because he has some control over him. He never had any control over me.
“I remember him coming into my house in Wolverhampton once and he was surprised how well I lived. It was a lovely house and lots of nice things in it. Most wrestlers in those days didn’t live very well off the wrestling business. I didn’t depend on the wrestling business for my income: wrestling was a nice little sideline with other sources of income that provided me with a lifestyle that most wrestlers didn’t have in those days.
“I think that really showed him that I wasn’t the sort of guy that he could buy. He couldn’t control me with threatening to sack me or something like that. A lot of people got trapped in wrestling at that stage, financially trapped basically. And I wasn’t one of them.”
Thornley also notes that Crabtree wasn’t the only person in the office who wasn’t always working with the wrestlers’ best interests at heart. “[Mick McManus] was the guy that made a little talent go along way in my opinion, and just ferreted his way into everywhere. He was a real ferret. He was a great [self-]promoter. I remember a guy who worked in the Dale Martin office told me one day: ‘You and the other guys lose out on a lot of television work because when [promoters] ring up and say “Oh, we want Kendo Nagasaki, we want Giant Haystacks,” Mick McManus is the guy that’s answering the telephone. And he says ”We can’t get that, but we can get Mick McManus” of course and that’s who they get because he’s answering the phone!’”
Outside of the ring, Thornley notes he could have done even better with his business interests, which included car dealerships. “I remember Gwyn Davies talking to me one day about this. He says ‘You know, you don’t make the best of his character.’ He had a recycling business and he says ‘I get a lot of my work because I’m Gwyn Davies but you lose out on all that.’ So probably I did lose out on a lot of business I might have been able to generate if I came out said ‘By the way, I’m Kendo Nagasaki.” But it never really appealed to me to be honest. I wanted to live a separate life and run my business life as me, Peter, and keep Kendo as Kendo.
“The fact that they couldn’t put a face to that character was the most important thing. I mean if I had to come out and just been like the rest of the boys, you know, and gone and had a drink with the punters after the show and things like that it would have killed it. Kendo had to be what he was. It only worked that way.”
Thornley also concedes it would have been difficult to keep up that level of secrecy in the age of social media and smartphone camera, not least because he spent many evenings socialising with George Gillette in London’s gay scene. “I think we would’ve found it very difficult because he was quite visible, wasn’t he? If you [had to] put a face to Kendo Nagasaki, it was George Gilllette and, if you wanted to find Kendo, you’d find George Gillette. You might well find me tagging along beside him at some stage.”
Perhaps Thornley’s most fascinating conclusion reflecting on his life is that the secrecy of the Nagasaki character was vital to him understanding and accepting his own sexuality while working in a profession not always known for its open-mindedness. “I was happy to be a secretive person as I’m bisexual, gay, whatever you want to call it nowadays. In order to be that, I had to live a separate life; I couldn’t drag that into the wrestling business early on. And so it was easier for me to be have a separate life and a separate existence from my wrestling world.
“It’s difficult when you go on a trip with all the lads you might say. When I went to Japan with the boys – ‘the boys!’ — the wrestlers… It’s more difficult to be in that group of people and maintain a separate life, isn’t it? You become part of a group and it does get more and more awkward if you allow yourself to be exposed to that.”
“To be secretive like I was behind the mask helped me to reconcile who I really was because I didn’t have to mix with people in wrestling. I could keep myself away from that buzz that goes on around the rest of the business. I could be part of the wrestling business as Kendo, then I could step out of that character and step into my [real] life.
“By the time I met George in 1967, of course, my life is exploding all over the place. I suddenly realized that I’d found a world that I hadn’t realized existed and I wanted to be part of that world, but I couldn’t drag Kendo into it. Kendo was in this macho world of wrestlers wasn’t he? And I suddenly discovered this camp world of queens!
“I felt that I had one foot in both camps, to coin a phrase. I couldn’t mix the two, so I had to be in one camp and then jump into the other. It wasn’t until I brought George in the business in 1971 that I exposed the wrestling business to that side of my life and then I think it became a little bit more obvious to some wrestlers that perhaps I do have leanings, but nobody truly knew because I never ever, ever made any indications towards my sexuality with any wrestlers or anybody in the business. But George dragged that other side of my life into the wrestling business in a funny sort of way.”
As he reflects on his life, Thornley stresses the importance of the Lee Rigby KNFoundation’s work. “It’s sort of my swan song I suppose if I ever I want to leave anything behind. I’ve had a great life really. I’ve had the best of everything in my life as far as I’m concerned. Now I want to make people aware of how much there is to do. I’m out there with the people who have been traumatized by these dreadful events that go on.”
It was a recent visit to the National Arboretum and a war memorial for British servicemen that focused Thornley’s mind on the topic. “You walk around and it starts in 1945. You walk around and you come to where Lee’s mentioned on there in 2013 when he got killed. Then you go round and round to 2018. And then what amazed me was, when you look, there’s this big stretch of wall with nothing on it and you suddenly realize we’re going to fill that all in due course. It’s not stopped, we’ve not had enough. We’re going to go on. There’s going to be more names as time goes on on this huge expansive wall.
“If I wanted to do anything for the rest of my life, I want [the foundation] to work for the people who really need our help.”
