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Post by oxbaker on Apr 4, 2022 1:31:45 GMT -5
Wasn’t too long ago you couldn’t go to an indie show — heck even a WWE show — and not see a ton of BC merch. It was the hottest thing going.
Now … nothing, basically. Yeah I know it still exists and it’s in NJPW and migrated a bit to Impact, but it just isn’t the cultural phenomenon it was just a few years ago, at least in the U.S.
Is it just a matter of Kenny Omega and AJ Styles and Balor and others heading to WWE/AEW and people don’t find Jay White and the current crop as interesting?
Anyone have any insight? It’s like one day you wake up and it’s basically so far off the radar that it’s hardy a thing anymore.
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Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby
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Post by Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby on Apr 4, 2022 1:44:57 GMT -5
The Bullet Club is no longer the face of top level American wrestlers outside of WWE. They're no longer "our guys" who made it in NJPW, the second biggest promotion in the world, not when AEW is right there and has more variety of American guys to pick from.
Doesn't help that, from what NJPW fans have been saying, the infighting has gotten old and the faction is a lot less relevant now.
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Post by Starshine on Apr 4, 2022 1:44:57 GMT -5
The act is stale. Simple as that.
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Apr 4, 2022 1:46:53 GMT -5
My guess... Because the main people from when the Bullet Club was white hot aren't in the Bullet Club anymore?
The Elite, Styles and Devitt/Balor haven't been in for years...
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Post by Lizuka #BLM on Apr 4, 2022 2:06:57 GMT -5
I'd say it's a mix of a lot of the people that folks liked Bullet Club for leaving, NJPW as a whole dropping in popularity and relevance, and just the act itself having gotten old.
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Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Apr 4, 2022 2:13:30 GMT -5
Jay White was gone too long and missed too much. He also frankly has failed to catch on in the same way Omega did, which is unfair to compare, but well... Jay's a very good heel, and good wrestler, but popularity-wise, he's not on Kenny's level. Doesn't mean he never can be, but he isn't right now.
EVIL, similarly, had major issues due to his strengths not being played to, with tedious interference in matches he should probably just WIN on his own.
They're in the middle of a civil war storyline that is attempting to refresh the stable and bring interest, but it's too early to tell if that's going to bear any fruit. In the meantime, it means Bullet Club has less star power than it did, something that was already kind of a problem.
As heels, United Empire leapfrogged them in relevance during the pandemic due to Jay being MIA. Ospreay had his own problems, but Cobb and O-Khan steadily gained buzz in a way most of Bullet Club struggled with.
One of their most popular members, maybe even the most popular, KENTA, is injured right now. That isn't exactly helping matters, especially when he'd add a lot of intrigue to the civil war situation.
They can likely bounce back from this, but they need a revamp. That's part of what this angle is for, obviously, but they need new blood. Chris Bey was a good choice, Good Brothers returning to the fold sorta is a lateral move, SHO was EVIL 2.0 in a bad way, but they probably could stand to get something else while losing someone else.
If it were up to me? Have Ishimori get kicked out in favor of keeping ELP and turn him face, since BC doesn't need 3 junior aces.
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Apr 4, 2022 2:15:28 GMT -5
The alternative wrestling boom is actually working as intended here; Bullet Club was a big headline name and a banner under which a lot of big names grew, and in its place has sprung up a healthier ecosystem of exposure to non-WWE wrestling that isn't just the Bullet Club logo, and presumably if you go to an indie show you won't see one shirt dominate, but you will see a better variety of wrestling shirts and the spreading of that love to more acts. That, I think, is a significantly healthier state to be in than to have one boom or burst logo that's one poorly executed civil war plotline away from completely collapsing.
But the biggest reason, and I can't stress this enough, is that this EVIL run has been total ballsac
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Post by Mozenrath on Apr 4, 2022 2:21:22 GMT -5
The alternative wrestling boom is actually working as intended here; Bullet Club was a big headline name and a banner under which a lot of big names grew, and in its place has sprung up a healthier ecosystem of exposure to non-WWE wrestling that isn't just the Bullet Club logo, and presumably if you go to an indie show you won't see one shirt dominate, but you will see a better variety of wrestling shirts and the spreading of that love to more acts. That, I think, is a significantly healthier state to be in than to have one boom or burst logo that's one poorly executed civil war plotline away from completely collapsing. But the biggest reason, and I can't stress this enough, is that this EVIL run has been total ballsac I feel for EVIL. They took everything that worked about him and ruined it. Like the only thing that's better is his haircut's nicer. It also makes Jay look like a dumbass that EVIL and the House of Torture have been doing what they're doing, and Jay decides, "That's it, gonna fire Tama and Tonga!"
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Apr 4, 2022 2:29:14 GMT -5
The alternative wrestling boom is actually working as intended here; Bullet Club was a big headline name and a banner under which a lot of big names grew, and in its place has sprung up a healthier ecosystem of exposure to non-WWE wrestling that isn't just the Bullet Club logo, and presumably if you go to an indie show you won't see one shirt dominate, but you will see a better variety of wrestling shirts and the spreading of that love to more acts. That, I think, is a significantly healthier state to be in than to have one boom or burst logo that's one poorly executed civil war plotline away from completely collapsing. But the biggest reason, and I can't stress this enough, is that this EVIL run has been total ballsac I feel for EVIL. They took everything that worked about him and ruined it. Like the only thing that's better is his haircut's nicer. It also makes Jay look like a dumbass that EVIL and the House of Torture have been doing what they're oding, and Jay decides, "That's it, gonna fire Tama and Tonga!" EVIL was my boy and it breaks my heart to see how much they've just completely destroyed him while giving him this push. The last thing this guy needed was the Bullet Club Special.
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Chiral
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Post by Chiral on Apr 4, 2022 2:33:29 GMT -5
NJPW feels like it's been really cold since the pandemic; mostly not their fault obviously but I feel like they're still working to get that energy back, and that spreads to acts like Bullet Club. House of Torture doesn't help either, as Shingo said "I guess they’ve formed their own team within the BULLET CLUB, what is it, House of Pancakes or something? House of..?’"
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Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Apr 4, 2022 2:36:14 GMT -5
I feel for EVIL. They took everything that worked about him and ruined it. Like the only thing that's better is his haircut's nicer. It also makes Jay look like a dumbass that EVIL and the House of Torture have been doing what they're oding, and Jay decides, "That's it, gonna fire Tama and Tonga!" EVIL was my boy and it breaks my heart to see how much they've just completely destroyed him while giving him this push. The last thing this guy needed was the Bullet Club Special. He probably can get a face turn down the line that'll right some of the wrongs, but it if frustrating that him beating Naito was intriguing, and then just turned out to be really poorly conceived.
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thehottag
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Post by thehottag on Apr 4, 2022 3:13:10 GMT -5
Two reasons:
- any act, no matter how hot at it's peak, eventually cool offs
- the 'main guys' of the Bullet Club have now moved elsewhere & are doing other things
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Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Apr 4, 2022 6:09:18 GMT -5
I watched NJPW on AXS for a while, and of course the Bullet Club with Kenny and the Bucks was heavily featured.
I saw a thread on here not too long ago about the Bullet Club, and my first thought was, “Damn, that’s still around?”
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Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]
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Post by Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-] on Apr 4, 2022 6:20:59 GMT -5
Jay White being in the US since the pandemic started and going ice cold himself surely didn't help matters either...
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Sephiroth
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Post by Sephiroth on Apr 4, 2022 6:32:09 GMT -5
It’s been around for what, over a decade now? No act stays hot for that long.
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Post by thecrusherwi on Apr 4, 2022 7:24:49 GMT -5
I think it got big because it felt anti-establishment in the US. The only way to watch the Bullet Club on US TV was usually ROH - which usually meant watching it late at night on a Fox or CW affiliate. It felt like a little secret. Now those main guys moved on. Some of them went on to be successful in WWE. The others founded a company that now airs on TBS in prime time after Big Bang Theory reruns. They’ve all gone mainstream. And mainstream is seldom cool.
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Post by Burst on Apr 4, 2022 7:33:31 GMT -5
Even with folks rotating in and out of the stable over time, and even accounting for stables in Japanese wrestling lasting longer in general, we're still looking at the Bullet Club existing pretty much continuously over the same amount of time it took both DX and the original nWo to form, disband, and then have reunions of varying quality.
And yeah, you have AEW arguably doing the best job of running with the constraints of the covid era, while the pandemic pretty much neutered any momentum that NJPW had on top of making it ridiculously hard for your gaijin stable to have, well, gaijin. It's a cyclic thing for sure, but honestly I feel like they just need to let Bullet Club end or permanently splinter than to keep dragging it into irrelevancy.
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Post by "Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik on Apr 4, 2022 7:58:20 GMT -5
I mean almost any act will get stale after *checks internet* NINE YEARS.
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Post by oxbaker on Apr 4, 2022 9:55:25 GMT -5
Thanks for all the answers. I hadn’t paid attention to NJPW (I usually just catch a match here and there’s when there’s buzz around it) and get the idea that their booking has been falling off.
Plus Jay White doesn’t have the appeal in the U.S. (yet at least) probably is part of it.
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Post by nisidhe on Apr 4, 2022 10:16:19 GMT -5
There is a romanticism to Bullet Club in that it can be great again "if only" - if only Devitt or Styles or the Good Brothers or some combination thereof came back to NJPW and set everything right, if these Johnny-come-lately "leaders" didn't all assume that Bullet Club was their personal army, if they remained the earth-shaking gaijin group throwing Japan's perceived isolationism and conformist culture back into its face.
The realities: its co-founders have not had _anything_ public to do with Bullet Club since 2016, and one has stated on numerous occasions that he's put the Club behind him. Subsequent "leaders" have either outgrown it or tried to co-opt it for their own benefit, only to abandon it as soon as it became expedient. The remaining original members (and I am looking at Tama, Tanga, and Fale here) have really done precious little to keep the memory of the original Bullet Club going. Japanese society itself has been confronted with a mirror on its own issues and has bigger fish to fry than a bunch of gaijin behaving pretty much like any other heel in Japanese wrestling these days.
Bullet Club has had a very good innings but, like DX and the nWo, is far more about its past achievements than about any future.
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