Main Mask has kindly shared a new Alan Garfield photo:
I've been looking everywhere for the 2004 thread which we have revived every five years or so as we have moved forum location, but this time I just can't find it. Can anyone help?
We had so much magnificent communal research and memories in one very long thread, including personal recollections from Alan Garfield's nephew. And valuable new memories as new Members have joined over the years.
We had also grouped lots of photos, inclusing this one which Main Mask has also found:
An approximately 25-year wrestling career that we are now twenty years into dissecting online, in little bursts that recur every Olympic year, seemingly.
In the run up to the Athens Olympics, all aspects of "our" wrestling history were up for discussion and exploration: we didn't know who William Matthews was; I didn't know who The Outlaw was; Masambula was from Gambia; after a few bouts in the South, Paul Mitchell would never be heard of again; The Royals were unquestioned as brothers.
We hadn't had the exposure to Kendo Nagasaki that has abounded in the last five years. Saxonwolf harped on about the hope of a Nagasaki autobiography. Politely I told him it just wouldn't happen!
Dreams do come true.
But Nagasaki had a website. I was discovering websites in 2003/4. I hadn't got as far as apps and pdfs. I seem to recall the website invited us to name our favourite wrestler, an ever so slightly loaded question. Anyway, I stated Nagasaki was great, which seemed only courteous to the host, but that my Number One was Alan Garfield, My memories of him were magical.
To many small-screen fans he was quite simply an unknown name. But I was heartened that some Southern stalwarts, like Ballymoss now, were quick to chime in with similar recollections and it all took off. I remember with great affection our deceased but still revered forum friends Old David and Grizzled Veteran. Recollections of a Garfield/Nagasaki feud even emerged.
So our collective resources led to that magnificent Voyage of Discovery, that continues today even through our intrepid NSW agent's unstinting attempts to track down Garfield's daughter (who I met in 1971 - I wonder if she remembers me?)
Dreams do indeed come true.
Maybe one day we will even discover what he said to Kent Walton during his 1965 Bradford match with Gwyn Davies that would lead to his television ban.