Following the heated departure of his then-tag team partner Tom Zenk from the WWF in 1987, Rick Martel experienced great success by forming the tag team Strike Force with Tito Santana.
Strike Force got their official start as a tag team in the then-WWF in July of 1987, but it was five years earlier, on August 29, 1982, when Tito Santana and Rick Martel teamed up for the first time.
Martel and Santana came up short in that battle after Brunzell pinned Santana. Despite the loss in their first attempt as a team, they would find great success just half a decade later.
The name Strike Force came from Santana’s promise that, as a team, they would "be striking (the Islanders) with force." Martel immediately came up with the team’s name based on this.