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Post by Finish Uncle Muffin’s Story on Apr 4, 2022 10:32:24 GMT -5
It's just old hat at this point. They're in their nWo Silver and Black era.
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Post by Magic knows Black Lives Matter on Apr 4, 2022 10:53:42 GMT -5
Cause it was a parody of the NWO and we damn near a decade deep into this, lolol.
It was always gonna have a fairly short shelf life but my goodness, they are getting every last bit of juice they can from it
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TWERKIN' MAGGLE
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Post by TWERKIN' MAGGLE on Apr 4, 2022 10:59:00 GMT -5
You know what Bullet Club needs? They should partner with a local school and publicly read kids' progress reports to their parents.
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Facetious
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Post by Facetious on Apr 4, 2022 11:02:46 GMT -5
Cause it was a parody of the NWO and we damn near a decade deep into this, lolol. It was always gonna have a fairly short shelf life but my goodness, they are getting every last bit of juice they can from it Not to mention, as a native English speaker, having a cool stable that speaks my language in a foreign company was cool as f*** and made it easily accessible and relatable. Since then, I'm significantly more familiar with the talent and in turn do not need that any more. Keeping it on life support with whatever gaijin they can conjure up reeks of desperation.
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Post by Chris Legentil -- Mind Freak on Apr 4, 2022 11:26:33 GMT -5
Shit is so f***ing old. Seeing Bullet Club in 2022 is a gateway to being a raging ageist.
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Post by sportatorium on Apr 4, 2022 12:30:51 GMT -5
Considering that they did a watered down version of it on Raw 25 a couple years ago that all traded too sweets with the Cliq, I'd say the ship sailed. Adam Cole dropping the name in AEW didn't really take it anywhere either.
I think Jay White can be the guy to officially end it & start something new if he makes it back to AEW. Impact does a good job with it, but the show is underexposed due to the channel it airs on and Bullet Club is definitely not over like it once was.
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Post by noobeast on Apr 4, 2022 13:53:33 GMT -5
People can give longwinded explanations all day, but it really comes down to 1 thing, whether anybody likes it or not:
Bullet Club was done as soon as The Elite were gone.
Jay White and these other guys are cool and all, but they aren't anywhere near the level that Omega and the Bucks were and are. In fact, I would say they need ro remove the albatross from Jay White's neck and let him go be great without being held back by a dead faction.
They have taken the NWO impression gimmick too far, as just like NWO was in 1999, they are just shambling on years after they should have dissolved.
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Apr 4, 2022 14:20:49 GMT -5
People can give longwinded explanations all day, but it really comes down to 1 thing, whether anybody likes it or not: Bullet Club was done as soon as The Elite were gone. Jay White and these other guys are cool and all, but they aren't anywhere near the level that Omega and the Bucks were and are. In fact, I would say they need ro remove the albatross from Jay White's neck and let him go be great without being held back by a dead faction. They have taken the NWO impression gimmick too far, as just like NWO was in 1999, they are just shambling on years after they should have dissolved. Yeah, but the Bullet Club survived losing it's lead members before. Hell it only seemed to get more popular each time the main guy left. and while the entire ELITE leaving at once certainly didn't help the fact it's been like almost 10 years of it being a thing it had to slow down eventually is also an issue.
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Post by Cyno on Apr 4, 2022 14:49:13 GMT -5
All good things have to end and Japan's pandemic restrictions have really done a number on NJPW's business model. Even after the Elite left, the Bullet Club still had some intrigue to it with Jay White's era and KENTA joining up with them. But then that momentum froze to a standstill with the pandemic. BC's strength (and NJPW's with it lately) has been the way it's incorporated gaijin into its roster to appeal to both native and international audiences. Travel restrictions pretty much killed that. Then you've got Jay White spinning his wheels in NJPW Strong and Impact feuding endlessly with the likes of FinnJuice and VBD when they're, quite frankly, beneath a guy of his stature. Chris Bey joining and the Good Brothers rejoining was a shot in the arm, but there's only so much they can do until they can get to Japan.
Then you've got EVIL and the House of Torture, which takes the booking tropes people tended to not like but tolerate with BC and amplify them. I was a big fan of EVIL's in 2019 and early 2020, but he went ice cold after leaving LIJ for BC and starting up this HoT stuff.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2022 15:05:15 GMT -5
It's an absolute miracle they made it this long. Stables just aren't meant to last nearly a decade.
I'd argue they were hottest when AJ was leading them, but Kenny did a serviceable job until his tweener/face turn.
When Omega left... that was pretty much it. Stables are meant to have a few big stars to elevate the newer talent that's also with them. Since the Bullet Club was meant to be the Gaijin group as a general rule, there's just not anyone established enough. Love Jay White, but he ain't it.
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Apr 4, 2022 15:15:56 GMT -5
Losing The Elite wouldn't have been as big a blow if not for the fact that they didn't do an amazing job of replenishing members. They lost Devitt? They got AJ Styles. They lost Styles, on top of the Good Brothers walking off with him? Huge surge in popularity for Kenny Omega climbing to the main event and to international superstardom on top of a giant rise in prominence for the Young Bucks who were always way more over than Gallows and Anderson. Jay White is good, but he doesn't have that penetration and foreign appeal to him. G.O.D., Yujiro, and the like had long been tolerated presences in Bullet Club. Ishimori, ELP, and KENTA are super talented, but it's still a drop off not only in terms of people who are over as hell in the west, but who have the continued stateside penetration in ROH and the like.
Also, New Japan's westward expansion had just in general done a lot to finally get people into ROH. At the outset, Bullet Club was some known talents who people recognized if they watched ROH, and that gave them a familiarity. For those who stuck in with New Japan and followed it, quickly there were just other acts who grew in appeal. People didn't get attached to Bad Luck Fale or Tama Tonga, but they did see the glory of Minoru Suzuki and give him the fclout to start pulling in US tours and good money, did turn Tomohiro Ishii into a cult figure maybe more popular among foreign NJPW fans than local ones, resonated with the universal themes in LIJ's outcast narrative and became more invested in Naito's quest to the top than they ever were in what the Bullet Club B squad was going to do. Bullet Club was an entry point into NJPW, but once people got there and opened themselves up to its roster there was just more going on, so when BC lost its big draws and got f***ed by a bunch of factors all at once? Not really a lick of hope left.
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Post by Cyno on Apr 4, 2022 15:27:10 GMT -5
It's funny, for as long as BC's been around, CHAOS and Suzuki-gun are even older. And they don't feel as played out as BC in 2022. Though CHAOS is more of a loose association than a true stable at this point.
LIJ also isn't much newer than BC and still going pretty strong.
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Post by Oh Cry Me a Screwball on Apr 4, 2022 15:27:49 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 Bullet Club isn't the nadir of the independent wrestling boom anymore, but it's not intending to be either. I still see the occasional Bullet Club shirt at my local indies, but more often than not, I'll see the Chris Bey variant since I live in Vegas and he's the top star of the city. Which speaks to how Bullet Club is far from a dead act needing to be put out of pasture, and instead has settled into an appropriate spot away from the limelight that reflects how fans regard the faction in 2022.
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Post by Sponsored by Groose Wipes on Apr 4, 2022 15:32:15 GMT -5
Paint the picture WCW still being alive and still having the nWo in 2003-2004. No stable is going to stay fresh that long.
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Post by noobeast on Apr 4, 2022 19:36:30 GMT -5
People can give longwinded explanations all day, but it really comes down to 1 thing, whether anybody likes it or not: Bullet Club was done as soon as The Elite were gone. Jay White and these other guys are cool and all, but they aren't anywhere near the level that Omega and the Bucks were and are. In fact, I would say they need ro remove the albatross from Jay White's neck and let him go be great without being held back by a dead faction. They have taken the NWO impression gimmick too far, as just like NWO was in 1999, they are just shambling on years after they should have dissolved. Yeah, but the Bullet Club survived losing it's lead members before. Hell it only seemed to get more popular each time the main guy left. and while the entire ELITE leaving at once certainly didn't help the fact it's been like almost 10 years of it being a thing it had to slow down eventually is also an issue. The difference being that while BC was popular in circles during the previous leaders, it wasn't even close to what it became with the Elite. Those guys brought it to a level of popularity that very few ever reach, and then became bigger than BC itself. And while it's absolutely true that it was bound to slow down after all this time, it's just being dishonest to act like this thing slowed to a stop. It popped like a balloon once those guys were gone, and interest died FAST, especially among casuals and casual followers of Japanese wrestling. I paid attention to NJPW as a whole for the first time ever during that time, but as soon as they were gone, so was I. There was a little buzz when Jay came in, but it just wasn't enough to pull it back. Bullet Club became synonymous with the Elite, and once they were gone, so was the interest from all but the hardcores.
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Post by Super Duper Dragunov on Apr 4, 2022 20:26:44 GMT -5
People can give longwinded explanations all day, but it really comes down to 1 thing, whether anybody likes it or not: Bullet Club was done as soon as The Elite were gone. Jay White and these other guys are cool and all, but they aren't anywhere near the level that Omega and the Bucks were and are. In fact, I would say they need ro remove the albatross from Jay White's neck and let him go be great without being held back by a dead faction. They have taken the NWO impression gimmick too far, as just like NWO was in 1999, they are just shambling on years after they should have dissolved. I still maintain that if Jay White had stuck with the 'infiltrating CHAOS in order to splinter it from the inside' and then formed his own group out of that, he'd have had a much better chance at being a bigger deal overall. I mean destroying Okada's group, and doing it right in front of him would have put him at a much higher level. And also helped legitimize his "influence" in NJPW. Granted he's went on to do great things, but joining BC cooled his stock a lot for me, and I think it was a hindrance to his momentum more than anything. BC getting more and more ice cold as it's went on has only went on to exacerbate that.
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Post by Jindrak Mark on Apr 5, 2022 5:41:49 GMT -5
It's just old hat at this point. They're in their nWo Silver and Black era. They’re way past that point. That was only 3 and a half years after the original nWo formed. The Bullet Club formed in 2013 and has been a thing the whole time with no breaks to freshen up. It would be like if instead of DX re-uniting in 2006 the gimmick had already been active straight through from 97-06.
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Post by Big BosskMan on Apr 5, 2022 11:12:56 GMT -5
Bullet Club used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was.
Now what Bullet Club's with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary.
It’ll happen to you!
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Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby
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Post by Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby on Apr 5, 2022 20:19:56 GMT -5
So just curious: a few people have mentioned that Jay White just isn't galvanizing the US fanbase like Omega and Styles and, to a lesser extent, Devitt did.
Does anyone think part of that is that Jay White is so thoroughly an NJPW product?
He hasn't gotten the Roman-style backlash, probably because he's a heel's heel and very good at it as well as one of the best in the ring out there. But, as my first post indicated, a lot of the appeal of Bullet Club to US fans seemed to be that they were American guys who made it. Even Kenny Omega, who mostly wrestled in Japan before then, was identified as a Canadian guy and there was something compelling about how the goofy guy with the video game references and the 9-year-old match and the rubber doll match had climbed the mountain. All of that is very different from White's reputation as NJPW's homegrown gaijin main eventer.
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Fade
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Post by Fade on Apr 5, 2022 20:33:25 GMT -5
People can give longwinded explanations all day, but it really comes down to 1 thing, whether anybody likes it or not: Bullet Club was done as soon as The Elite were gone. Jay White and these other guys are cool and all, but they aren't anywhere near the level that Omega and the Bucks were and are. In fact, I would say they need ro remove the albatross from Jay White's neck and let him go be great without being held back by a dead faction. They have taken the NWO impression gimmick too far, as just like NWO was in 1999, they are just shambling on years after they should have dissolved. It’s crazy cause it seemed a lot of “die-hard” NJPW/BC fans got sick of The Elite (within BC,)when their popularity surged. They left and it looked like for a second there would be a return to “legitimacy” but it’s just been pretty boring with the exception of a few things here and there.
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