From Portland to Montreal
Rick Martel recruited Tom Zenk to Lutte Internationale while Zenk was working in the Pacific Northwest. Martel, a former AWA World Heavyweight Champion and a part-owner of the Montreal-based promotion, offered a larger weekly guarantee—$1,000 rather than the $700 Zenk was receiving in Portland—along with the prospect of teaming with Martel and receiving championship opportunities.
Lutte Internationale (International Wrestling) was then Quebec’s leading independent promotion. Its ownership and management circle included Martel, Gino Brito, Dino Bravo and Tony Mule, while former owner Frank Valois remained an important figure in the promotion.
A demanding circuit and a television-made identity
Lutte Internationale ran six or seven nights a week, 48 weeks a year, in towns across Quebec and Ontario, returning to Montreal and the Centre Paul-Sauvé every Monday. The promotion supported that circuit with the popular International Wrestling television program, with announcer Milt Avruskin and Gino Brito on colour commentary.
Zenk was promoted as “The Future Champion of Quebec” and a future world champion. However, the presentation proved to be stronger than the underlying push. Martel, Bravo and Steve Strong remained the promotion’s principal heavyweights.
The Long Riders and the IWA tag title
Zenk’s most sustained program placed him in tag action alongside Dan Kroffat against the Long Riders, Bill and Scott “Hog” Irwin. Kroffat had previously teamed with Alofa—the future Rikishi—but the Zenk–Kroffat pairing became central to the tag-team scene. The feud included a violent angle in which Zenk was triple-teamed, repeatedly struck with a ringside chair and left bleeding heavily.
After the Long Riders were stripped of the Canadian International Tag Team Championship following a disputed decision, they regained the belts on appeal. On August 12, 1986, in their first defence after reinstatement, the Long Riders lost the championship to Zenk and Kroffat. It was the clearest fulfilment of the opportunity Martel had promised.
Zenk recalled Kroffat—also known as Phil Lafon—as a legitimately tough, generous friend; they later worked together in All Japan. Brito and Bravo, he said, treated him well and regarded him as dependable “money in the bank.”
A future pillar in Montreal
The Montreal stay brought Zenk into contact with Toshiaki Kawada, an All Japan wrestler on a North American excursion arranged by Shohei Baba. Kawada was then in his early twenties, close to six feet tall and around 90–95 kilograms.
He lived in a nearby, sparsely furnished apartment, with a roll-up sleeping mat, videotapes from home and Japanese wrestling magazines. Zenk visited often, listening to his stories and recognizing the loneliness of a young wrestler adapting to an unfamiliar circuit.
A decade later, Kawada had become one of the legendary “Four Pillars of Heaven” (Shitennō) who dominated All Japan Pro Wrestling.
Life around the Montreal office
The booking for Lutte Internationale was controlled by a “conglomeration” of the promotion’s leading figures. This collective arrangement mirrored the company’s ownership structure and tended to produce competing priorities—television positioning, title programs and the partners’ personal ambitions did not always point in any coherent direction.
The WWF challenge and decline
Meanwhile, the WWF was capturing both television attention and the wrestling business in Canada. Crowds for Lutte Internationale events had been in decline for several years. A decisive incident in Montreal told the story: Lutte Internationale had booked the Montreal Forum for a local card, but was displaced by a WWF event on the same night, forcing the promotion into the smaller Paul Sauvé Arena. To the locker room, the message was clear—the companies could not compete on equal terms. It was time to move on.
Martel and Bravo eventually signed with the WWF after reportedly selling their interests to Brito and Eddy Creatchman. Martel also negotiated a place for Zenk in the WWF as part of the Can-Am Connection.
From Montreal to the Can-Am Connection
On October 13, 1986, Zenk and Kroffat dropped the IWA tag championship to the Long Riders. Within days, Zenk and Martel were travelling to New York to join the WWF as the Can-Am Connection. The paperwork had been prepared at a private meeting between Martel and Vince McMahon. Zenk initially resisted signing, then agreed after being told that McMahon expected a signature and after agreeing with Martel on an earnings target of $5,000 a week within six months. If that target was not met, they would accept a guaranteed contract with All Japan.
Zenk’s time in Lutte Internationale was brief but consequential. It moved him from a regional singles prospect into a heavily promoted television role, gave him a major tag-team program and championship, and placed him directly in the path of the WWF’s Canadian expansion.