Strong kept on bragging he could beat Martel with one snap of his fingers and took pride saying that he was headed for superstardom. Rick Martel was supposedly a stepping stone. I remember one program in particular where Martel showed he had enough of Steve Strong and said he wanted everything to be settled once and for all. Being interviewed by the all-time incompetent Albert Di Fruscia, Martel had carried a bottle of beer with him and, at the end of the interview, broke the full bottle over his own head. I really marked out big time on this, as I was about 11-12 years old and witnessed a bloody Martel keeping on yelling at Strong, even though his face was covered in blood. (About a year ago, I saw a segment from Pacific Northwest from maybe the early 1980s with Roddy Piper doing the very same thing, with a bottle of beer too, and guess who was standing by his side? Yep, Martel himself…) 

The last match between both men didn’t show much difference from what we had seen before: both men were counted out.  Post-match, Strong said he had Martel beaten and Rick kept running away from him.  

Unfortunately, we could never know who really was the best man, since shortly after that Martel was brought up with the big club (WWF) and left Strong and his International Wrestling superhero days behind. Another page was turned on IW’s short but rich history.

With Martel gone, Strong’s path to number one status in IW seemed clear, but Gino Brito, Sr. found someone else to get in Strong’s way—none other than the Madman from Sudan, Abdullah the Butcher.

I will get back to this later this summer with a column on Abby, but I can quickly say he had become a fan favorite (!!!) on the territory after turning his back on the Creatchmans. Now Eddie “The Brain” and Floyd needed someone to get the job done on Abby.  After unsuccessfully trying Kareem Muhammad, Man Mountain Moore and Sheik Ali, they asked Strong to unload on Abby.

Both men went at it on a few occasions, only to show the same kind of result we had seen at the end of the Strong-Martel feud: no man showed better capacities than the other one. Brito had to keep Abdullah’s reputation intact (Abby always had been  a big name in Quebec) and he also had to maintain Strong’s rise to the top. You couldn’t just see Abby laying down for Steve Strong (we all know that Abby’s his own biggest fan …) and Brito had to prepare Strong for becoming THE top star on the land.

After showing hard-fought battles, which turned into brawls (no bloody ones, though, to my disappointment), both men took their own path. But Strong was still the top heel in IW.  

I said in my first column that International Wrestling had an agreement with the World Wrestling Council by the end of its run,  in 1986-1987. That is what explains the fact that a guy like Abby was present on the territory for most of those two years.  Other WWC  “invaders” took part of the action in Montreal.  One of them came to Montreal one day wearing a mask and taunting Steve Strong at ringside to finally intervene in one of Strong’s matches and cost him the victory. After leaving the ring, the hood  took off  his mask and revealed… Dr. D David Shults. Shults came to Montreal as a fan favorite (!!!) and briefly feuded with Strong, even winning the International Title on November 3^rd 1986 (thanks to the Great Hisa’s Puroresu web site for this one). 

This period of time (late 1986-early 1987) was kind of a dark era for IW, since most of its top stars were gone to the WWF (Bravo, Martel, the Rougeaus, Tom Zenk), and all there was left interesting was Abdullah the Butcher and Steve Strong. Brito seemed to get lost a little and looked like he didn’t know what to do with the one people (and Albert Di Fruscia) called “Sadistic” Steve Strong.  That is why his feud with Shults didn’t go anywhere, as well as the feud he started shortly after that with Jason the Terrible,  another WWC comer. Both men were very physical, very muscular, and the fans in Montreal were kind of amazed and shocked to see Jason the Terrible (who, at the time, was almost unbreakable and invincible, a bit like the Kane character at his debut in the WWF in 1998) resisting to Strong’s strength and devastating clotheslines.

Finally, Brito would find a way to exploit Strong’s talent to its full potential by turning him face. Actually, when the promotion folded in mid 1987, Strong was the top face on the territory. The thing is that the fans had started cheering for Steve Strong although he was supposed to be a heel, a rulebreaker. Fans loved to see him annihilate jobbers sadisticly with his famous piledriver “à la” Paul Orndorff. 

Unfortunately, I don’t really remember how Strong turned face, but what consolidated his top face status is when he and Abdullah the Butcher joined forces to face two of Eddie Creatchman’s men. At the end of the match, Abby turned on Strong,  joining Eddie Creatchman’s stable again, and attacked the Sadistic One. This started another feud between both men, except fans were cheering for Strong this time. Gino Brito had found someone to replace the Bravos and the Martels gone to moneyland.

Steve Strong had a lot of charisma, due to the fact that he didn’t ask for fans  approval—which is definitely what brought the fans to cheer for Steve Austin in the first place, a few years ago. Strong used to do his thing, committed to beating the hell out of every member of the Creatchman stable. (By early 1987, Eddie was almost gone and successfully replaced by his son Floyd, who was cocky and had an annoying voice. His stable was formed with Richard “The Boss” Charland, Rocky De La Serra (whom they called “The Rock” at the time…), “Pretty Boy” Chuck Simms and Kendo Nagasaki, another WWC “invader”. 

Everybody on the Creatchman roster being his target, Strong started to look for Kendo Nagasaki, who had injured a few jobbers until Strong got his hands on him. Funny how International Wrestling made a major heel out of Kendo, playing it like his green mist hurt people really bad (jobber Sunny War Cloud was carried away from the ring area by fellow wrestlers Dan Kroffat and Strong himself after being “blinded” by the mist). IW really sold Kendo big time, Floyd saying the green mist was due to air pollution in Montreal (almost peed in my pants when I heard him say that on TV). Too bad, though, IW had to pick its major heel characters out of the territory (I can’t believe the top heel team, by the end of IW’s run, was formed with Richard Charland and Chuck Simms!).

Once International Wrestling folded later in 1987, Steve Strong left Quebec for Stampede Wrestling, where he became almost anonymous, even though he was an appreciated face there (he hung out with Steve Blackman, which probably didn’t help…). Thinking back about Strong, I have sweet and sour feelings. This man really was an interesting character on IW territory, but I can’t understand how come Brito never put a strap around Strong’s waist.  Not even the TV Title! Another painful memory is that, according to www.sampedewrestling.com, Steve Strong had a try to impress WWF recruiters, one night in Montreal, in 1987.  Remember my second column, where I said IW and the WWF had an agreement  for about 10 yearly shows at the Forum, where both rosters mixed up.  Strong had his shot on one of those events, but the WWF considered he failed. They thought (and Hulk Hogan is reported to be the one who noticed the headquarters) tht Strong was too stiff and didn’t call him up, which explains why Strong vanished to Calgary and never came back to surface again.

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