Rick Martel vs. The Natural (Jackyl/Cyrus/Don Callis) cage match MB 1996

Winnipeg IWA Hardcore Wrestling promoter Tony Condello brought in Rick Martel (using his WWE "Model" gimmick, but as a face) to do a feud with Tony's lead heel, The Natural in 1995/1996. The highlight of this feud was a series of cage matches held at Tony's cards in small towns across Manitoba. One of those matches was held at a TV taping for Tony's Winnipeg CKY TV show that was held in the summer of 1996 in Portage La Prairie, MB. I was there and I didn't record the date, but I recall it was on a Friday night, and it took forever for Tony's crew to put that cage up, so it was past midnight by the time the match took place. The Natural went on to become The Jackyl in WWE, then Cyrus in ECW, then under his real name Don Callis in TNA. But all those characters were only mouthpieces, so fans outside of Manitoba could be watching Don actually wrestle here for the first time. Bad News Allen appears as The Natural's bodyguard. An interesting bit of trivia is that when Don was first accepted by WWE, he and Martel were supposed to debut as a tag team called The Models with Don's character being called Don Casablancas. But Martel decided to go to WCW instead, so Don became The Jackyl in WWE. (Source: Don himself when he co-hosted Winnipeg wrestling radio show No Holds Barred on CITI FM with the annnouncer you hear in this match, CITI's Joe Aiello.)

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• Rick
• Martel
• The
• Natural
• Jackyl
• Cyrus
• Don
• Callis
• Joe
• Aiello
• Tony
• Condello
• IWA
• Hardcore
• Wrestling
• Winnipeg
• Portage
• La
• Prairie
• Bad
• News
• Allen
• cage
• match

[markallenkellner]

Was that Adam Impact (aka Edge) climbing the cage beside Lance Storm?