Back بوليت كلوب Arabic বুলেট ক্লাব Bengali/Bangla Bullet Club Spanish بولت کلاب Persian Bullet Club French Bullet Club ID Bullet Club Italian BULLET CLUB Japanese 뷸렛 클럽 Korean Bullet Club Dutch
| Bullet Club | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Stable | |
| Leader(s) |
Sub groups:
|
| Members | See below |
| Name(s) | The Bullet Club[note 1] The New Bullet Club |
| Debut | May 3, 2013[4] |
| Years active | 2013–present |
Bullet Club (バレットクラブ, Barettokurabu),[5] stylized as BULLET CLUB and sometimes shortened to BC,[6] is a professional wrestling stable primarily appearing in the Japanese promotion New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW). In the United States, the group currently appears on events run by the company's U.S. subsidiary, New Japan Pro-Wrestling of America, as well as U.S. partner promotions Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA, formerly Impact Wrestling) and All Elite Wrestling (AEW). The group additionally appears on events promoted by Tamashii, NJPW's Australasian affiliate, as well as on events of other Australasian independent promotions.
The group was formed in May 2013 when Irish wrestler Prince Devitt betrayed his Japanese partner Ryusuke Taguchi and came together with American wrestler Karl Anderson and Tongan wrestlers Bad Luck Fale and Tama Tonga to form a villainous stable of foreigners, which they subsequently named Bullet Club. Before the end of the year, the stable was also joined by three other Americans, The Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson) and Doc Gallows. Wrestlers from the Mexican Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) promotion have also worked tours of NJPW as members of Bullet Club, which led to the formation of an offshoot group named Bullet Club Latinoamerica in CMLL in October 2013. At the end of 2013, Bullet Club held both the IWGP Junior Heavyweight and IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championships while also having conquered three of NJPW's five annual tournaments. The stable marked a major turning point for the career of Devitt, a longtime fan favorite, who began his ascent out of the junior heavyweight division and into the IWGP Heavyweight Championship picture.
In April 2014, Devitt left NJPW and was replaced in Bullet Club by American wrestler AJ Styles. The following month, Bullet Club received its first Japanese member when Yujiro Takahashi betrayed his former partners in Chaos to help Styles capture the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, meaning that the stable had now held all titles NJPW had to offer. When NJPW added a seventh title (the NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship) at the start of 2016 and an eighth title (the IWGP United States Heavyweight Championship) in July 2017, Bullet Club quickly won them as well. To date, they are the first of three stables (the others being Chaos and Taguchi Japan) to have won every championship available in NJPW. They also held every male championship in Ring of Honor (ROH) (World, TV, World Tag Team and Six-Man) active at the time of the NJPW–ROH partnership. The stable continued adding members, most notably Canadian wrestler Kenny Omega, who became the group's leader in early 2016 when Styles, Anderson and Gallows all left NJPW. After a "civil war" between The Elite and OG factions within the stable, Omega, Cody, Marty Scurll, Adam Page and The Young Bucks quietly left the faction in October 2018 to form their own group called The Elite, which would eventually form AEW, with New Zealand wrestler Jay White taking over as the fifth leader of the group.
Due to COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions in 2020, a portion of the group (including White) could not travel to Japan, with Evil becoming the de facto sixth leader and the leader of the Japan-based contingent of the group, while White (along with other members unable to go back to Japan) established a U.S.-based branch. Even after travel restrictions began easing as time went on, the two branch structures would remain in place as they would expand into Impact Wrestling with Chris Bey becoming the first wrestler to join from the Impact roster. In March 2023, David Finlay became the seventh leader of the group. A month later on April 5, 2023, Jay White would make his official debut for AEW, establishing with Juice Robinson a new branch of the group – Bullet Club Gold, they also use the name the Bang Bang Gang.
- ^ "Results from "Summer Sizzler 2014"". Revolution Pro Wrestling. June 15, 2014. Archived from the original on April 18, 2017. Retrieved February 17, 2015.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
NJPWFactionswas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "Styles & The Bucks aren't the only Bullet Club members coming to Vegas". Ring of Honor. Retrieved February 17, 2015.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
WrestlingDontaku2013was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "選手プロフィール一覧". www.njpw.co.jp (in Japanese). Retrieved 2020-07-19.
- ^ 悪こそ本性…“元マフィア予備軍”だったファレ. Tokyo Sports (in Japanese). March 20, 2014. Archived from the original on November 8, 2017. Retrieved March 20, 2014.
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