Also known as Al Diamond
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Doncaster’s Ernie Bowman was trained in the early 1970s by Yorkshire wrestler/promoter Cyril Knowles. In the mid 1970s he began wrestling for Cyril and independent promoters of the north. After a couple of years he was signed up by Max Crabtree for Joint Promotions where he sometimes used the name Al Diamond (not to be confused with a 1950s Canadian heavyweight of that name).
His career continued well into the 1990s. The Ebony kid died of cancer in December 2013. Photo (above) was taken when we met Ernie in 2011.
Heritage reader Rob Hans wrote:
Ernie was an employee of mine in the late eighties. A lovely bloke, he was a driver for a waste management company I was brought in to manage, he worked with a guy called Dave Adams (who also wrestled under the name `Grizzly Adams`).
Ernie was hard-working, loyal and a devoted dad. All the people I inherited at that particular depot were lazy and worked to meet their own agenda, and ended up gone. Except Ernie.
I put him through his Class 1 HGV (which he failed about eight times!) but you couldn`t give up on the guy as he was just so willing and enthusiastic he was a pleasure to have around. What you saw was what you got.
Ernie became a friend, rather than an employee, and he came up from Askern near Doncaster to Halifax to do some plastering for me. He brought his daughter with him and she was amazed at the hills where we are (Askern being very flat). She was an absolute credit to him.
We eventually lost touch (as you do….), but I often wondered where he was and tried to track him down with little success. Anyone meeting him just couldn`t help but be captivated by his massive beaming grin and smile, and his huge and hearty laugh.
I never saw him wrestle, but a quarter of a century on, I still feel a better person for meeting him, and that applies to very few people I`ve met, believe me.
Rob Hans
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