The Origin of The Bullet Club

The Bullet Club is a professional wrestling group, primarily appearing in the Japanese promotion New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW). In the U.S., the group appears most notably in Ring of Honor (ROH) and also in WWE as "The Club"

The group was formed in May 2013, when Irish wrestler Prince Devitt (Finn Balor) turned on his 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 Jackson 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 A.J. Styles. The following month, Bullet Club received its first Japanese member, when Yujiro Takahashi joined and helped Styles capture the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. The following June, members of Bullet Club also won the IWGP Intercontinental and NEVER Openweight Championships, 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, Bullet Club quickly won that as well. The stable continued adding members, most notably Canadian Kenny Omega, who took over its leadership in early 2016, when Styles, Anderson and Gallows all left NJPW for WWE.