Yet Another Bullet Club video (but not like the other two)

This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can find the full video Here.

Earlier this year the Bullet Club passed ten years old, and it's certainly been an interesting journey. With it's convoluted history of members, off-shoot groups even and a few cancelled individuals in it's past. In a way, it's the MCU of wrestling at this point, which you can take one of two ways based on where you stand depending on if you're bored of Marvel or not yet. The Bullet Club was a cult favourite group who achieved enough main stream appeal to fill an arena with 11,000 fans, while being on the shelves at Hot Topic. With that in mind here are a few facts and hopefully interesting trivia notes about the b-b-Bullet Club. If you know any that I've missed, please share them in the comments. You might be wondering why this subject and why now? Well, for two reasons to be honest with you. I've already made two Bullet Club videos this year, and I didn't want to make another list of potential members. And two, this video is dedicated to all of you who want a break from talk of CM Punk, just for a little while.

1) The nWo comparisons

As I noted the Bullet Club is ten years old, which is actually longer than WCW Nitro and Thunder lasted combined. Both have had their share of off-shoot groups, with the NWO having the Wolfpack, the unofficially named B-team, the 2000 version sometimes called silver, and NWO Japan, some of which had different and confusing names, such as the original group at times being known as black and white or Hollywood. The LWO doesn't count by the way, as it was a separate group with no real connection thought up by Jason Hervey. TNA's copyright free version, The Band doesn't count either despite including Scott Hall, Kevin Nash and Sean Waltman, mostly because it was shit. That one might as well have included the Nasty Boys, who were weirdly also in TNA around the same time. BC has also had more spin off's and reboots than Cheers, and an arguably more eclectic group. At present there is the main Bullet Club for the fans still watching New Japan, the House of Torture for the emos, the The Rogue Army for the Aussies, The War Dogs for the young guys, ABC which is the Impact group of Ace Austin and Chris Bey, Gold for the Jay White and the electric mayhem fans, and you could possibly include the Elite in AEW today, as they were technically an off-shoot of Bullet Club despite not being connected for a few years. Past spin off's include Bullet Club Latin America in CMLL, but the non-union Mexican equivalent didn't seem to last that long.

Given how Bullet Club has lasted longer it probably shouldn't be a surprise that it has far more members and alumni than the NWO did. Only counting full time wrestlers the NWO had a total of 34 members over it's life, and to date Bullet Club has had 51, again not including part timers or managers. BC is obviously still going, so this number will likely go even higher.

One thing that the NWO didn't do as well as Bullet Club by far is expand into other companies. Bullet Club has had an official presence in not just New Japan, but AEW, Ring of Honor, Impact, and if we're including the Elite, you could also argue that the OC in WWE counts as one too given that three of the four members were BC originals, with AJ Styles even being a former leader. NWO also had a WWE version that debuted in February 2002 and died a death by July, and weirdly trailed off after Shawn Michaels joined it. NWO did have their own parody version in ECW's Blue World Order, consisting of Big Stevie Cool, Da Blue Guy and Hollywood Nova, 

As best I can tell there are only two overlapping members of both groups. Those would be Scott Norton and Jeff Jarrett. We have an expression in my part of the world for someone who turns up everywhere that very much applies to Jeff Jarrett, who "gets where water weyn't." Granted neither were in the Bullet Club for long, and Jarrett felt like more of a troll move given how people were sick of him in those years, not me Jeff as I've talked about on this channel before... But it is still interesting to see some form of overlap between the two groups.

For what it's worth, original nWo members Scott Hall, Kevin Nash and Sean Waltman have all expressed endorsement of the Bullet Club, and didn't have an issue with their use of the famous 'too sweet' sign. Waltman even said in an October 2023 interview that he was flattered by it, and it took no money from his pocket, while he and also Hall have even been pictured with the Young Bucks doing the too sweet sign that they famously received a cease and desist from WWE for doing. On Waltman's podcast not long after said legal letter, Nash even noted that Bullet Club doing that sign keeps the memory of the nWo alive, later giving an example "If you're the Rolling Stones and Pearl Jam wants to cover Satisfaction, I don't think I've got a problem with it. It'd be one thing is these guys were jabrones (sic) but these are young talented guys that are basically emulating the thing you did."

2) Surprising Bullet Club members.

I already talked about overlapping members, but did you know the Bullet Club for a while had the son of an NWO OG as a member? Cody Hall, the son of Scott was at one time a Bullet Club member. Looking at his son's wrestling career and actually seeing him wrestle live a few times as recently as 2019, Cody is somewhat different from his father in many ways. Far beyond his Razor Ramon days, Scott Hall oozed Machismo, but Cody sort of oozes ambivalence. In a curious story I found, Cody was in 2020 signed to MLW for a single day before being released. The reason for this hasn't been made public, but MLW owner Court Bauer confirmed at the time that he had signed, stating that he quote "couldn't move forward" whatever that means. Al mot of Cody's that ambivalence might stem from a serious neck injury that he suffered working for New Japan in 2016, an injury that Kevin Nash claimed on his podcast had quote "soured him" on wrestling. 

Looking into Hall's career he spent time training at the New Japan dojo, which is notorious for it's gruelling atmosphere, and anyone who gets through it is worthy of respect. All of this is to say that Cody Hall is somewhat of a footnote as a Bullet Club member, but he is far from the only one. On February 11th 2017, Frankie Kazarian would join the Adam Cole led version of group in Ring of Honor, or would he? Kazarian's joining came while betraying his long time friend and tag team partner Christopher Daniels, who was set to challenge Cole for the ROH World championship at the upcoming 15th Anniversary show. Daniels, who at the time was twenty-four years into his career, had worked for companies all over the world and was still yet to accomplish his goal to win a World championship in a major US promotion. This would end on March 10th, when Kazarian would actually reveal that he had swerved the Bullet Club, by helping Daniels achieve his dream, getting one over on Adam Cole and the Bullet Club in the process. Christopher Daniels' World title reign wouldn't be that long, as on June 23rd Cody would bring the belt back to the Bullet Club, achieving his first of two major World titles also. the second by the way being his NWA World championship that he won at All In the following year.

Kazarian actually has another link to the group if you consider AEW's Elite to be a spin-off. In 2021 having lost to the Young Bucks in a match that caused his SCU team with Christopher Daniels to be disbanded, he took on the role of Elite hunter, a notably bad gimmick which involved him running in and chasing Elite members away when they tried to cheat in matches, notably seldom able to hunt, or even catch any Elite members successfully. He isn't the only wrestler to brand himself as a one man army against the Bullet Club though, as in 2014 former WWE star Yoshi Tatsu would arrive in New Japan proclaiming himself to be the Bullet Club hunter. This would be halted in it's steps because of a neck injury Yoshi suffered after taking the Styles Clash wrong, a move in which the man taking it has to lean their head back instead of what a wrestler would intuitively would to when taking a move which is to tuck their head forwards. Yoshi would return in 2016, forming the Hunter Club, which weirdly included as members of all people Billy Gunn and Captain New Japan, the less said about the latter, and his turn to the darkness as the Bone Soldier, the better.

One more that I'll share is a current Bullet Club member who was actually an honorary member years earlier, even before he was ever in New Japan, unofficially by the way. Recent Bullet Club addition Gabe Kidd was one of the more memorable roster members of What Culture Pro Wrestling, having had a long losing streak, which he overcame by pinning Cody Rhodes for their Internet championship. Gabriel was very much a popular wrestler in the company that later became Defiant Wrestling, and when Bullet Club members Adam Cole and the Young Bucks needed an extra team partner to face WCPW's top heels The Prestige led by current Impact star Joe Hendry, Kidd was put in the match, which occurred on March 21st 2017. Gabriel even got to walk to the ring with the Bullet Club, wearing their logo, and was referred to as an 'honorary' member, though Cole and the Bucks look none too happy to have him on their team. Kidd would unfortunately take the loss on the night, getting pinned by future Gallus member Joe Coffey.

In 2019 while working for Revolution Pro Wrestling, Kidd would catch the eye of Katsuyori Shibata, and would be invited to enter the New Japan Dojo system. He would be based in the LA Dojo under the tutelage of Shibata. Come June 2023 at Dominion, Kidd and fellow LA Dojo graduate Alex Coughlin would join Bullet Club for real this time, now led by David Finlay.

3) The sole survivor.

One thing as an on and off New Japan fan I have always wondered, is how did Bad Luck Fale last as long as he has in a company so respected for it's work rate? To put kindly, one of these is not like the others. Fale is the only surviving original Bullet Club member, having been brought in right at the start as the bodyguard of the original leader Prince Devitt, known as Finn Balor these days. It's still crazy in a way after all these years, that Fale is still going in the faction today.

US company Chikara had for a while a wrestler called Latvian Proud Oak, played by the way by RD Evans, who notably quit as a WWE writer after penning a hall of fame speech for Bret Hart that got him in hot water. At least in the time I've been watching New Japan, the proud oak resembled an actual tree in the ring less convincingly than Bad Luck Fale. If I'm honest, maybe I'm still slightly bitter about the otherwise excellent 2018 G1 Climax, where he and Tama Tonga seemed to be competing over who could achieve the worst DQ finish.

To be fair to Fale, one reason that he has endured as I understand it has been his efforts in acting as a gateway of sorts for many Australia and New Zealand based wrestlers to make it to New Japan through the Fale Dojo, and despite my mockery he deserves a ton of credit for that.

These days Bullet Club has somewhat of a rebuild movement going on, having taken on a new leader and twelve new members in 2023 as of late November. Many of those new members are fairly recent Dojo graduates like Kidd, Coughlin and Clark Conners, while Drilla Moloney comes from the company's relationship with British promotion Rev Pro. At the time of me making this video, including the US versions there are twenty five current members, and there are many accomplished members I haven't even mentioned in this video.

Sources:

Waltman Fightful interview: https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/exclusives/sean-waltman-bullet-club-using-too-sweet-it-s-not-taking-any-money-out-my-pocket

Cody Hall https://411mania.com/wrestling/details-cody-hall-signing-with-leaving-mlw/

Cody Tidal match https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmLCNMtan7s

Cody Nash https://atletifo.com/wrestling/wwe/cody-hall-scot-hall/

Bullet Club vs Prestige https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCDhl9uKA1A