They decided for me to switch to a heel, which I was really excited about because I hadn’t worked heel out there. I’d been about five-and-a-half or six years as a straight-laced babyface, and I felt like I’d, not peaked, but done all that I could do. I wasn’t as creatively fulfilled anymore, and when they said, ‘Would you turn heel?’ I said, ‘Absolutely!’" Soon, he had a shot at this glory in a match with Hiroshi Tanahashi, the ace of the company, but lost in what turned out to be a rather one-sided match. The characteristically sportsman-like and noble Prince Devitt refused to shake Tanahashi’s hand and began acting more arrogant and heelish in the weeks after the match.

ANDERSON: He held the Too Sweet up in the air and looked at me. I started to get chills. I said, "Are we doing this right now?" The team used this real-life camaraderie when they formed at Dontaku 2013 and became a natural fit. Originally a hand signal used by The Kliq in the mid-nineties, Bullet Club started using the "Too Sweet" gesture early in their formation, and it had begun to catch on. You could start to see fans doing the hand signal during Bullet Clubs’ entrances. But he wasn’t making much of an impact as a character, and towards the start of 2013, he had started losing all of his big singles matches. In the lead-up to Dontaku, he had been teaming with Tama Tonga in tag matches before the game-changing formation at the event. "Bad Boy" Tama Tonga Bullet Club original, Tama Tonga, in 2013 And it was so intimidating, all the boys were sat there around the ring, and I was in working on the fly against Taguchi. This was before the show and basically just a try-out for me. I guess it was a five-minute match, and we finished up, and the booker at the time pulls me over and was like:

Rubbing Guys the Wrong Way Backstage in NJPW

Despite their founder and leader’s departure, Bullet Club is still going strong today! These stories may also interest you: He would train, wrestle, and teach in his home country until 2005 when he moved to California to train in the New Japan Inoki Dojo (where he would meet Karl Anderson), before signing with New Japan officially in 2006, moving to Japan in the process. It changed everything. Before, nobody really took notice of us. But when we got this chance, we knew we had to take it, and we had to make people hate us. A lot of people don’t like being hated but look, figure it out, man. You’re either cheered and remembered, or you’re hated and remembered. We understood the situation." This caused an outrageous amount of heat from the Japanese fans, who were outraged that someone would cheat to win the prestigious tournament. In 2009, he would form a team with his try-out opponent Taguchi, known as Apollo 55. The team would win the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championships within their first year. It would continue tagging throughout the next four years, cementing Devitt as a popular foreign babyface to the Japanese audiences when combined with the comedic fun-loving Taguchi.

So, in the blink of an eye, Devitt had his new ring name that he would wrestle under for the next eight years in Japan. ANDERSON: We loved The nWo. We loved Scott Hall. We loved Kevin Nash. It was just kind of our thing. The pair eventually faced each other at Kizuna Road in 2013. However, this time, Devitt was unable to get the win despite lots of attempted interference from the rest of the Bullet Club. Okada had retained the IWGP Heavyweight title, and Devitt would only get another chance if he entered and won the G1 Climax, a tournament typically reserved for Heavyweight only.Initially, it was me and Ferg (Devitt), and the idea was for me to help make him legit as a heavyweight. When he turned [on Apollo 55 partner Ryusuke Taguchi], it just exploded, and we knew we were onto something. So you gotta understand that us foreigners when we leave home and come here, about 80% of our time is here in Japan. So that’s who we’re next to is the guys we work with. We’re with them more than with our real families at home. So, of course, these guys become your family, so the bond is really tight." Karl Anderson (real name Chad Allegra) had been wrestling eight years before he first signed with New Japan, after training in their California-based Dojo, in which he met Devitt, before signing a contract with NJPW in 2008. Bullet Club original members: Karl Anderson and Prince Devitt