Peter Thornley, an 84-year-old gay man, has earned his spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest male professional wrestler to perform worldwide. Thornley, known by his ring name “Kendo Nagasaki” during his career, has even surpassed Ric Flair’s final professional wrestling match at age 73. The only performer to exceed Thornley’s record is Mae Young, a female wrestler who wrestled on WWE Raw in 2010 at the age of 87, according to Them.
Thornley wrestled at a British LDN Wrestling event titled “The Final End of the Feud,” which featured the team of Thornley, Ben Nelson, and Jordan Nelson taking on Sage Valentine, Stevie Fee, and Sanjay Bagga in a tag-team match.
In classic Thornley fashion, the match ended with shenanigans, a common trope in pro wrestling meaning that the victory was controversial. Though Thornley’s team was declared the winners, Bagga claimed that Thornley used the ring ropes to illegally give him leverage during a pin. The referee sided with Bagga, banning Thornley (in storyline) indefinitely from performing at their events.
“And has the legacy of Kendo Nagasaki truly been silenced … or is something darker still to come?” LDN Wrestling says on its Facebook page. “Stay tuned. This story is far from over.”
Thornley has competed as “Kendo Nagasaki” throughout his wrestling career, beginning in 1964, according to Outsports. Thornley came out as bisexual in his 2018 memoir, Kendo Nagasaki and the Man Behind the Mask. “Bisexuality is forced on my type of person,” he says as he later came out as gay.
“Society does not allow you to be who you really want to be,” Thornley says on BBC Radio Stoke in 2024. “My bisexuality, I’d been pushed into that sort of thing. If it had been now, I’d be gay. I wouldn’t be bisexual.” He mentions that two people he went to school with were arrested for homosexual acts. “I am not a gay fighter, I am a fighter who happens to be gay,”
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