Kendo Nagasaki

Kendo Nagasaki is a professional wrestling stage name, used as a gimmick of that of a Japanese Samurai warrior with a mysterious past and even supernatural powers of hypnosis.

[2] Back home in Britain, he achieved even greater fame due to his 1975–1977 feud with the tag team of future mutual arch enemies Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, as well as his December 1977 televised voluntary unmasking ceremony.

[6] A year after Thornley's original retirement in 1978, a lighter wrestler named Kendo Nagasaki II (played by Nick Heywood) briefly wrestled for Joint Promotions.

[8] Also in the late 1970s, wrestler "Big" Bill Clarke (also one half of the Lincolnshire Poachers tag team with "brother" Ron) appeared on shows by UK independent promoter Sandor Kovaks as a version of Kendo Nagasaki modelled directly on Thornley's character.

[9] Still as King Kendo, Clarke would later join Joint Promotions as a journeyman heel, teaming with Giant Haystacks in the main event at the Royal Albert Hall, making several appearances on television and frequently wrestling in tag matches against Big Daddy, including teaming with King Kong Kirk on the night Kirk died in the ring in 1987.

King Kendo also held the WAW World Heavyweight championship before curiously losing it to his own alter ego Dale Broughton in 2018 (possibly with a substitute under the mask).

[12] In 2008, the original Tiger Mask, Satoru Sayama, introduced to his Real Japan Pro Wrestling promotion a wrestler named Kendo Nakazaki.

Nakazaki's real name is unknown; he wears a mask and a Union Jack flag on his chest, but is most likely a Japanese student of Sayama's.