Last month marked the 10th anniversary of The Bullet Club, and a new feature has Finn Balor, Kenny Omega, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and many other prominent wrestlers discussing the group’s origins and legacy.
Sports Illustrated reached out to Balor, Omega, Tanahashi, Kazuchika Okada, Matt Jackson, Adam Cole, Cody Rhodes, Taiji Ishimore, and others about their various times in or against the long-running Bullet Club.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
Balor on the origin of the group: “Originally, it was just going to be me and Fale. But the office saw how close I was with Chad [Karl] and Tama, and how we would spend every minute of the day together. So they asked me to come up with a name and extend our backstage relationship to the ring. I was trying to pick a name that tied us all together. Karl was ‘The Machine Gun,’ Fale had been calling his finisher the Hand Grenade, and Minoru Suzuki had been calling me a ‘real shooter’ for some months as we would roll submission wrestling in the ring before the shows.”
Balor on picking the group name from a list: “To me, Bullet Club sounded the coolest. However, I had mild concerns as the Japanese would sometimes mispronounce ‘bullet’ as ‘beret.’ But I chose to go with my gut, and the rest is history.”
Tanahashi on Balor’s evolution in the group: “The transformation of Prince Devitt is a big memory. Devitt used to be loved by the fans, but it wasn’t until he made that shift that you realized just how determined he was to succeed.”
Anderson on the group’s chemistry: “Me, Ferg, Fale and Tama, we were always together at the dojo. We were always on the bus together, and we were always eating together. When they finally put us together, we all realized, ‘We’re going to have a lot of fun together.’ It turned into one of the coolest factions of all time and a star-maker, but we didn’t anticipate that at the time. We were too busy having fun to recognize anything else.”
Balor on his key moments in the group: “For me, it represents a moment of time in Japan. I remember two incidents in particular. One was being carried to the ring by Fale at Korakuen Hall right after we established the group, and the usually respectful NJPW audience were audibly booing. A couple people even reached up to physically hit me as we made our entrance. The second was in the days that followed when I was at the office, and they informed me that they had to designate someone to answer calls from people complaining about Bullet Club’s cheating.”
Okada on the group’s identity: “The image that comes to mind is this really tough foreign-wrestler-focused team. AJ Styles became a key figure, like Prince Devitt did, and later Kenny Omega and Jay White. They have this deep history, and it’s become a worldwide phenomenon. I see people all around the world in Bullet Club T-shirts.”
Omega on his first time in the Bullet Club gear: “Until then, it was just sketches on paper. When I finally stood in front of that full-length mirror for the first time, it was the first time I saw myself in my Bullet Club getup. The costume designer gave me the original ‘Cleaner’ gear, and I liked the way that I looked—and I liked the way I felt. New Japan president Naoki Sugabayashi walked in, and he is a very quiet individual, but he looked at me and said, ‘You look like a movie star.’ That was a big confidence boost heading into my first Wrestle Kingdom.”
Cole on his time in the group: “From the time I entered the Bullet Club, my career went on this trajectory that couldn’t be stopped. It’s one of the hottest pro wrestling factions worldwide ever, and I got to be part of it when it was such a hot commodity. That was absolutely vital for my career.”
Matt Jackson on being part of the stable: “I couldn’t leave the house without seeing a Bullet Club shirt or being asked for a ‘Too Sweet’ in passing by a fan. I remember sitting in a Hard Rock Cafe in Osaka, munching on some chicken tenders with a few of the Bullet Club guys, right in the middle of this run. We had just finished a huge show and we all had the foresight to reflect on what we were living. I remember saying, ‘This is probably the biggest and coolest thing any of us will ever do in our careers.’ The others agreed. I probably wasn’t wrong.
“Bullet Club will always have a part of me. When I see that skull logo, I’m immediately transported back to Tokyo Dome Hotel overlooking Tokyo Dome and a sea of skyscrapers. Or I’m back on a crammed hot bus that Karl Anderson just farted in, and everyone is scrambling to roll the windows down. Or I’m in a smoky restaurant after a show, at a sponsored dinner having Korean barbecue with the whole gang, laughing until my face hurts. Bullet Club worked because it was a story of friendship. Everyone wants to go on adventures with their friends. Everyone wants to go into battle with their friends. Everyone wants to laugh with their friends. Bullet Club created a movement that sparked the revolution, which created All Elite Wrestling. I’ll forever be in debt to it for a long time. Actually, for life.”
Rhodes on redefining himself in the group: “Bullet Club represented something completely different for me. A lot of people told me I shouldn’t do it. Had my father been alive, he would have suggested against it. It went against what I wanted to do—I didn’t want to be in a group, I didn’t want to be on a team, I didn’t want to be in a faction—I wanted to be quarterback and the lead dog. Stepping into Bullet Club, seeing Kenny as the leader, and using my real-life quest to compete with him, this was an opportunity to take what Finn Bálor created and was extremely profitable, and take it to another level of profits. Look at the T-shirt sales. One Hour Tees has three storefronts now. We turned it into an even greater enterprise. That’s something I hold dear.”
Ishimori on the group changed him: “I am who I am now because I’m part of Bullet Club, so I’m grateful for that. It’s hard to believe how much my career has changed since I joined Bullet Club. A big part of why I came to NJPW and joined Bullet Club was because of that name value.”
