Finn Balor is one of the prominent members of the WWE faction the Judgement Day. Alongside Damian Priest, Rhea Ripley and Dominik Mysterio, Balor has helped the group become significant players on WWE programming.
The success of the faction shouldn’t come as a surprise as Balor has a wealth of experience in gang warfare. Back in 2013, while wrestling for NJPW, Balor created one of the most popular and influential factions in professional wrestling history.
Then known as Prince Devitt, Balor turned on his longtime tag team partner Ryusuke Taguchi and sided with Bad Luck Fale. The duo added Machine Gun Karl Anderson and Tama Tonga to form the heel Gaijin stable.
Finn Balor Came Up With The Name Bullet Club
In a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, Balor revealed the origins of the Bullet Club and how he came up with the name for the group.
“Originally, it was just going to be me and Fale, but the office saw how close I was with Chad [Karl] and Tama, and how we would spend every minute of the day together. So they asked me to come up with a name and extend our backstage relationship to the ring.
I was trying to pick a name that tied us all together. Karl was ‘The Machine Gun,’ Fale had been calling his finisher the Hand Grenade, and Minoru Suzuki had been calling me a ‘real shooter’ for some months as we would roll submission wrestling in the ring before the shows.”
Balor then disclosed a list of names that he came up with, which involved the Bullet Club/Parade, the Reload Club
the Lock ‘n’ Load Club/Parade and the Getaway Club. He then revealed he picked the coolest name.
“To me, Bullet Club sounded the coolest. However, I had mild concerns as the Japanese would sometimes mispronounce ‘bullet’ as ‘beret.’ But I chose to go with my gut, and the rest is history.”
The group quickly became one of the most dominant factions while the additions of the Young Bucks, AJ Styles, Kenny Omega, Adam Hangman Page and Adam Cole increased its popularity.