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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.

Devitt recalls, "We were the only people who were really working proper heel. I went from being this super straight-laced babyface doing all these high-spots and dives to like, I completely changed my offense to eye-pokes, nut-shots, and I wouldn’t do any of the fancy stuff anymore. Anderson mentions the rapid sell-outs also on the Steve Austin Show. "That first shirt they came out with when they sold like eight-thousand in two hours, I said, ‘What’s going on, man? What’s going on?’ That’s when I knew something really got cool. I felt it. 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." After winning the Super Juniors Tournament, Devitt challenged Tanahashi to a match at Dominion, NJPW’s second-biggest show of the year, in an attempt to defeat the opponent he couldn’t beat before forming Bullet Club. This was a chance for IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion Devitt to take on once again a Heavyweight, something that rarely ever happened in the company.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!’" Devitt went on to win the Best of the Super Juniors, defeating Kenny Omega in the semi-finals and Alex Shelley in the final to win the tournament, with a great deal of interference and help from the other members of Bullet Club. Fale explains, "Oh, completely natural. What people don’t know is that we were always together. We called ourselves the ‘Dojo Boys’ because we were the only foreigners who were here. At times they’d bring in foreign guys to do big shows, Giant Bernard would do a tour here or there, but we were always there since 2010 when Tama came, I and Ferg and Anderson had been there before I got there.

The way I see it, it was four Gaijin, in the land of the rising sun, that were brothers, that ARE brothers. It was only us Gaijin, and the rest were Nihongo (Japanese). So, we became brothers, friends, best friends, because all we had was each other, to speak to each other in English. We had Devitt and Karl, who were our Sempais, and then me and Fale came in as young boys.

Rubbing Guys the Wrong Way Backstage in NJPW

He then trained to wrestle under the Dudley Boys at their school, Team 3D Academy, making his debut in 2008, and eventually finding his way to Japan in 2010 to become a young boy in the dojo system where he became friends with the other three members. Fale remembers, "The Japanese fans take it all very seriously. I think it did feel dangerous, but that’s when we knew we had something. Feeling that emotion, feeling that hate, it was, ‘Woah, we’ve gotta keep this going!’ 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. Fale Simitaitoko was a Tongan-born former rugby player when he entered the New Japan dojo system in 2009. Having never wrestled before, he became the first-ever foreign-born trainee to go through the entire dojo process from start to finish (Devitt had already trained elsewhere when he joined). It began with four foreign dojo boys in Japan who became friends and tried to make a name for themselves in a company that generally didn’t provide many opportunities for foreigners. This is the surprising tale of the creation of the Bullet Club!

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?" ANDERSON: It started for sure with me and Finn in 2006, in Santa Monica in the New Japan Los Angeles Dojo. We were just buddies and would Too Sweet each other for the hell of it because we thought it was fun. Then, as we progressed and moved into New Japan Pro Wrestling, we always did it to each other on the bus. It was part of our handshake.Anderson had a lot of success in New Japan, winning the World Tag League and IWGP Tag Team Championship in his Bad Intentions team with Giant Bernard.

And I was like, ‘Okay, cool.’ I had no choice, you know? But I guess in the week they mulled it over and said, ‘Oh well, he’s only 24. He’s not old enough to be a king yet. He’s only a mere prince,’ ya know? And that’s how the name came about. Just in the blink of an eye." 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 DevittDespite their founder and leader’s departure, Bullet Club is still going strong today! These stories may also interest you: He gained a lot of notoriety as a singles competitor throughout 2012, with high-profile wins against Shinsuke Nakamura and Hiroshi Tanahashi, reaching the finals in the G1 Climax. 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: I remember coming up with this name, Bullet Club, thinking that’s kinda cool. I was trying to tie everyone’s characters together. Bullet Club has become a widely recognized brand that has almost crossed over into mainstream appeal outside of the wrestling world. It all started with four dojo boys and the brotherhood of the Gaijin living together and trying to make a name for themselves in Japan.