Three things came together to get me started on this custom.  First, I've been a fan of Cage since reading his Max miniseries - in fact, I'd done a custom of that version of Cage a while back. 

Second, he's been popping up in a few comics I've been reading.  He's a regular in New Avengers, and he and his pal Iron Fist recently appeared in an arc of Cable & Deadpool.  I've recently done customs of both of them, and a new Cage would fit in with them.

And finally, I stumbled across new fodder that might work for Cage, and hopefully improve upon what I had done previously.

I had actually been planning a Cage for a while, but the fodder I had accumulated just wasn't going to work.  I had picked up a Ron Killings figure from the Toy Biz TNA line when they first came out.  RoboKillah from fwooshnet.com had the same idea (and we're not sure who stole it from whom), and put together a great custom of the New Avengers Cage from it.

Problem was, he used a head from Primetime, also from the TNA line, and I had picked up a WWE wrestler (D-Von Dudley).  The Primetime head is in scale with Killings.  D-Von is not - way too big.  Now, I probably would have replicated Robo's recipe, if I could have found a Primetime, but that was not to be.

However, I lucked out when I found the fodder that I alluded to earlier.  Jakks has been prepping a line of figures more articulated than their current product, and I happened upon an early release figure - Rey Mysterio Jr.  His body turned out to work well with D-Von's head, so the custom was salvaged.

D-Von has a very large head.  I removed a good portion off the top and sculpted Cage's cap on it.  He also has full cheeks, which I reshaped for a more chiseled look.  When I repainted the head, I left a bit of the dark skintone around the eyes to help define them better, and gave him more classically arched eyebrows.

The torso was a straight and arms were straight repaints.  Rey didn't have any nipples sculpted.  What you see is a cheat with paint - a dab of brown, mixed in with a smaller dab of black while the paint was still wet, with more brown added after that.  I did a similar cheat for his belly button, just so it would stand out a little more than what was actually sculpted.  For the veins on his arms, I tried a technique that I had been admiring on Actorjez's customs - he paints the veins a shade lighter than the base skintone and then outlines them with a shade darker.

The wristbands, zipper, belt, and Cage belt buckle are all rubber bands.  The buckle is another cheat with paint.  It's a segment of rubber band painted silver, with the lines delineating the characters drawn in with a black Sharpie.

In the end, I used Killing's legs.  Rey's pants were the balloon type he wears to the ring.  Killing's had the look I wanted.  To use them with Rey's hips was a bit of work.  The pegs are really long, so I had to hollow out Killing's legs to the point where I was drilling into his knee disk.  I then had to resculpt the inner thighs to add some weight in there.  And because the color scheme has a lot of brown, I first sprayed the legs with black vinyl dye, and didn't fully cover the pants with brown, so it would have a different appearance from his skin.  I had a mishap with the vinyl dye - I wrapped the torso with Saran Wrap before spraying , and should have known some may soak through - luckily it only affected the back, which you can see is a little rough as a result.

In comparison with my earlier Cage, this figure has an ab hinge, ball-jointed hips, and double-jointed knees - a lot more options for posing.  If I weren't so lazy, I would redo other figures that used older wrestler base figures.