While their Impact Wrestling contracts have expired, The Good Brothers are keeping busy with New Japan Pro Wrestling for now.
“Machine Gun” Karl Anderson discussed what fans can expect from him and his tag team partner Doc Gallows in the near future. Sitting down with Sports Illustrated, Anderson spoke at length about the influence of the Bullet Club, a potential run as a singles performer, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On his NEVER Openweight title win against Tama Tonga: “That match with Tama, it meant a lot. We’ve been on the road together for so long. You hear this a lot, but it’s not cliché—people become like family in this business. We’ve spent so much time together on the road. Tama isn’t a friend to me; he’s more of a brother. When Gallows and I decided to come back to Japan, we made it a point to do some different shit. We wanted to do something people didn’t expect. And the decision was made for me to attack Tama in Fukuoka, and go into a program with him. And it’s really cool to see how good Tama’s become. He was basically starting in the business in 2009, 2010, and he’d only had a handful of matches when he came into New Japan as a young boy. I watched him go from a guy with a great look and potential to someone who has come into his own. He’s really fucking good now. Anytime you can get into a big match with a brother of yours, there’s nothing fucking cooler.”
On the longevity of the Bullet Club: “Each time somebody has talked shit about Bullet Club, or started to say Bullet Club is dead, or there’s too many members, something else cool happens. It just remains hot. If you look at the totality of wrestling, there’s a bunch of great factions. I look at it this way—I grew up on the Four Horsemen. I love the Four Horsemen. There’s the Four Horsemen, the NWO, Degeneration-X, and the Bullet Club. Of course, there are other great factions, and I’m not slighting anybody. But look at all the guys that have gone through the Bullet Club, where they are now, and how they still show their Bullet Club roots in AEW, WWE, and Impact. Bullet Club has been reinvigorated again in New Japan Pro-Wrestling with Jay White, who’s turning into a massive star. Now he’ll always be attached to the Bullet Club. [Kevin] Nash and [Scott] Hall passing on the Too Sweet to us, that completely legitimized us. Then Shawn Michaels and Triple H throwing up ‘The Kliq’ sign to us in the Manhattan Center on Monday Night Raw [in 2018], that was another big moment. That’s all because of what we did in Japan. It’s pretty crazy to think, back to 2013. There’s no way we could imagine where this was going to go.”
On a potential singles run: “People look at us primarily Anderson and Gallows, or Gallows and Anderson, and I love tag-team wrestling, but I do want a singles run. I came into my own during the G1 in 2011 when I started learning from Tanahashi and Shinsuke [Nakamura]. I wanted to build the types of matches they were creating, and then I started to do that. I absolutely want an extended singles run in New Japan Pro Wrestling. I was pushing for one in Impact, but the timing just didn’t work out. I love singles matches. It’s a different way to show people what I can do. I fucking love it.”
On whether he might appear in WWE again: “Just like you said, never say never. We’ve got verbally agreed-upon dates with New Japan Pro Wrestling for an extended period of time. But there’s such a built-in story with Bullet Club, and we never got to finish the story [in WWE] with AJ Styles, or even Finn. There’s been a lot of things that have happened in the business, so you can never say never. Anytime we can work with brothers like AJ and Finn, we’re always going to listen to that.”
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