In the mid-2010s, international wrestling fans -- particularly in the West -- started really getting into New Japan Pro Wrestling thanks to the Bullet Club, NJPW’s resident gaijin heel faction. With their iconic T-shirts, recognizable western stars like AJ Styles and Kenny Omega, and nWo style antics, they quickly won over fans who didn’t know a thing about Hiroshi Tanahashi or what Strong Style even is.
In the years since its inception in 2013, Bullet Club has gone through several eras thanks to stars jumping ship to WWE, founding their own promotion, or simply not being able to get into the country. Let’s take a look at the various incarnations of BC.
9 Bullet Club Latinoamerica
New Japan has a working relationship with the lucha libre promotion CMLL, so wrestlers from the two promotions will often team up and tour together. This can even go as far as becoming a part of factions, like whenever a wrestler from the original Los Ingobernables teams up with LIJ. Bullet Club did the same thing as Tama Tonga enlisted Rey Bucanero, El Terrible, and La Comandante to form Bullet Club Latinoamerica. The group was rather short-lived, but they did manage to capture the CMLL World Tag Team Titles.
8 The Civil War
In 2018, Bullet Club would experience a huge amount of turmoil as Kenny Omega’s leadership and focus on The Elite over the rest of the group would cause a load of attention to the group. This would all come to a head not only with a power struggle with Cody, but also a full-on civil war between the Bullet Club Elite (Kenny, The Bucks, etc) and the Bullet Club OGs (Tama Tonga, Bad Luck Fale, and more). This had some tremendous potential but never really culminated in the climactic match for the fate of the BC that fans hoped for.
7 Breathe With The Switchblade
Soon after The Elite broke away from Bullet Club, the group lost all its “star” wrestlers, and needed a top evil gaijin to build the BC around, and quickly found one in “Switchblade” Jay White, who betrayed all of CHAOS and took leader Okada’s manager Gedo with him on his way out. White’s time as leader not only got him the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, but also reunited the group with lost members like Chase Owens and Yujiro Takahashi.
In a lot of ways, White was a solid choice to lead the group, as his betrayal generated some much needed heat for the newcomer. However, White was always a weird fit for Bullet Club because he not only seems more like a crazed loner but also has a pretty explicit knife theme, which clashes with the group’s gun theme.
6 Ring Of Honor
NJPW’s partnership with Ring of Honor led to basically a full-on takeover of the promotion by Bullet Club, thanks to the popularity of The Elite and the lack of popularity for most ROH stars. BC already had Adam Cole in its ranks, but in Ring of Honor they basically took the place over, adding Adam Page and Marty Scurll to its ranks. It improved the show in a lot of ways and brought more eyes on the product, which had fallen in stature over the years. However, once The Elite formed their own company, nearly everyone left ROH, which suffered even worse in Bullet Club’s absence.
5 King Of Trios
The Bullet Club’s entry into Chikara’s 2015 King of Trios tournament was a blast, and deserves its own special place as a version of Bullet Club. A stripped down configuration of AJ Styles and The Young Bucks, the group (mostly) dominated this six-man tag team tournament, putting on great matches against Chikara’s homegrown characters, Lucha Underground cult favorites and future UK stars Tyler Bate and Trent Seven. There was also a running gag where Styles kept slipping on the ropes anytime he tried to do one of his springboard moves. Whether it was initially on purpose or not is anybody’s guess.
4 The COVID Era
But the finale of the New Japan Cup tournament gave the group a new leader to build itself around: EVIL, who betrayed Tetsuya Naito and Los Ingobernables de Japon to join Bullet Club. With Dick Togo as his manager, EVIL has become leader of an all-Japanese BC, which is a new and interesting direction for what used to be a gaijin group.
3 The Pro Wrestling Tees Era
When Kenny Omega ousted AJ Styles from the Bullet Club in early 2016, a new era was ushered in, with Omega leading the group and moving up from the Junior Heavyweight division to the Heavyweight. Adding western favorites like Cody and Marty Scurll to the mix, generating buzz with Being the Elite on YouTube, and landing impressive T-shirt deals with Hot Topic meant that Bullet Club reached a higher profile than ever. This era was extremely memeworthy thanks to BTE, but also included some of the greatest matches in recent memory as Omega took on Kazuchika Okada in their incredible IWGP Heavyweight Championship rivalry.
2 The Originals
The original configuration of the Bullet Club is unfairly overlooked, but it makes sense considering that the membership was small and they didn’t yet have their iconic T-shirt. Founded in the wake of Prince Devitt turning on tag team partner Ryusuke Taguchi, the team of Devitt, Bad Luck Fale, Karl Anderson, and Tama Tonga felt like a tight-knit group before they even added The Young Bucks and Doc Anderson to their ranks. Even though this era only lasted about a year, they won not only the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Title, but also the Junior Tag and Heavyweight Tag Belts, as well as both Junior tournaments (singles and tag).
1 The AJ Styles Era
For many BC fans, the peak of the group was when AJ Styles, fresh off of walking away from TNA, made a surprise debut as the latest member of the group in the wake of Prince Devitt’s departure. Under AJ, the Bullet Club got their first two IWGP Heavyweight Championship wins as well as so many titles in other divisions that during this two-year period, each of NJPW’s championships was held by someone in Bullet Club at one point. This era also featured the inclusion of part-timers King Haku and Jeff Jarrett as well as more notable full-timers like Yujiro Takahashi, Chase Owens, and Kenny Omega.