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Post by Shootist on May 28, 2019 19:38:09 GMT
It's nice that a faction finally achieved it's goal of getting it's own promotion started. I guess Bullet Club should get some points for that. I have also seen some of their shirts in public which is more than I can say for nearly every current WWE star. I'm in the same boat as UT and am just not familiar with them to vote. I also know they knocked off all the kliq/nWo hand gestures which I thought was lame. All that being said they deserve their spot, I hope AEW succeeds but turning the wrestling world on it's head? Nah. I've seen some clips, Triple H had to have a grin ear to ear as they still had to resort to taking jabs at him when they said they would be a company that would change the paradigm. That shit worked 20 years ago, we'll see if it works now.
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Post by thereallt on May 28, 2019 20:54:48 GMT
Who the fuck are the Bullet Club?
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Post by KING KID on May 28, 2019 21:09:20 GMT
Who the fuck are the Bullet Club? LMAO.
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Post by Emperor on May 28, 2019 23:19:09 GMT
Who the fuck are the Bullet Club? Prince Devitt Karl Anderson AJ Styles Kenny Omega Cody Hall Cody Rhodes Adam Cole Chase Owens Jeff Jarrett Matt Jackson Nick Jackson Marty Scurll Tama Tonga Bad Luck Fale Hangman Page Doc Gallows Leo Tonga Taiji Ishimori Tanga Roa Yujiro Takahashi Rey Bucanero Robbie Eagles Jay White Jado Gedo Hikuleo El Phantasmo
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Post by Deleted on May 28, 2019 23:26:40 GMT
Who the fuck are the Bullet Club? Prince Devitt Karl Anderson AJ Styles Kenny Omega Cody Hall Cody Rhodes Adam Cole Chase Owens Jeff Jarrett Matt Jackson Nick Jackson Marty Scurll Tama Tonga Bad Luck Fale Hangman Page Doc Gallows Leo Tonga Taiji Ishimori Tanga Roa Yujiro Takahashi Rey Bucanero Robbie Eagles Jay White Jado Gedo Hikuleo El Phantasmo Imagine lt reading that list going full on Rock.
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Post by Baker on May 29, 2019 2:46:23 GMT
Bullet Club made my list at #8. I had them as the 2nd highest ranked stable of this decade and now I'm thinking I probably should have had them as the top stable of the 2010s.
They're not my cup of tea. Most of their wrestlers are hit or miss for me with more misses than hits. I don't like the groups they were influenced by so it stands to reason I wouldn't like them either. I find the 90s taunt spam incredibly obnoxious and downright cringey. I never really got Bullet Club either. Are they a tribute to groups like the NWO & DX? A parody? A little bit of both?
With that being said, they're popular and important. I rarely see wrestling shirts in the wild these days but when I do they are usually repping the Bullet Club. I think the Club is largely responsible for New Japan's worldwide growth during this decade. Their leaders, and many of the other members, have gone on to do some huge things both in New Japan and elsewhere. They're a proven draw. They were about the only thing anybody cared about in ROH during the past few years. Somehow they've managed to come across as cool. And their legacy is still being written. No Bullet Club=No AEW is a very reasonable assumption. I think it's very possible they go down as a Top 5 stable in wrestling history when all is said and done.
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Post by RT on May 29, 2019 5:51:03 GMT
Bullet Club were my #1. Single-handedly saved the stable dynamic in the modern era. Has berthed some of the best talents on the planet today. Yeah they borrowed their style and whatnot from nWo and DX but I think that was the point. It’s like a homage but also ironic at the same time.
If you’re unfamiliar, History of Bullet Club was released for free on NJPW’s Youtube channel.
Part 1:
There’s also an excellent recap of Prince Devitt’s history in NJPW and how he started Bullet Club that I’ve posted before, seen here:
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Post by UT on May 29, 2019 14:31:54 GMT
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Post by KING KID on May 29, 2019 14:42:03 GMT
Woah. A faction that’s not on my list.
And holy shit, it’s high.
I don’t know anything about this and can’t wait for people to start talking it up/down so I can catch some knowledge.
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Post by UT on May 29, 2019 14:48:35 GMT
Woah. A faction that’s not on my list. And holy shit, it’s high. I don’t know anything about this and can’t wait for people to start talking it up/down so I can catch some knowledge. I only know of the WCW version but it was pretty good , I mean Stone Cold and Paul Herman in a faction is fucking great. Also Rick Rude and Arn Anderson were other big players or favorites of mine. I’ve actually went back and watched a bit of DA and their War Games match against Stings Squadron is the first War Games match I ever seen. Ton of fun. Check it out Kid.
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Post by thereallt on May 29, 2019 15:27:46 GMT
The Dangerous Alliance was my #10 and in retrospect I probably ranked them too low. The definitive version for me was the NWA version when Heyman was known as "Paul E. Dangerously"
I'm mean just look at that talent. Austin, Rude, Zbysko, Eaton, Anderson etc...etc.... And you cannot say these guys did not work as a cohesive unit either.
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Post by RT on May 29, 2019 17:28:39 GMT
I had them on my list somewhere. I’ll post it at the end.
When the WWE started doing a “Paul Heyman Guy” angle all those years ago with Ryback and Cesaro (I think this was around the time CM Punk dropped Heyman but before Brock came back? I can’t remember), I had high hopes they were going to do their own version of The Dangerous Alliance using a few guys that Heyman had hand-picked as high talent, underutilized henchmen.
And then nothing came of it. Because the WWE sucks ass.
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Post by UT on May 29, 2019 17:49:08 GMT
I had them on my list somewhere. I’ll post it at the end. When the WWE started doing a “Paul Heyman Guy” angle all those years ago with Ryback and Cesaro (I think this was around the time CM Punk dropped Heyman but before Brock came back? I can’t remember), I had high hopes they were going to do their own version of The Dangerous Alliance using a few guys that Heyman had hand-picked as high talent, underutilized henchmen. And then nothing came of it. Because the WWE sucks ass. Don’t forget Curtis Axel. They should have done something though. Factions are the best way to feature more talent without always running the same match back.
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Post by UT on May 29, 2019 17:52:34 GMT
The fact that they don’t have factions these days is dumb - it’s their best formula. Look at the most successful periods of history for them.
The Heenan Family/Hogan
The Corporation/Austin
The Shield/Everyone
The Authority/Daniel Bryan
Those are arguably four of the hottest times for the WWE in our lifetime and they all revolve around stables and feeder factions.
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Post by RT on May 29, 2019 18:25:06 GMT
And the stories that evolve from there write themselves, or you get iconic moments when the group inevitably collapses.
Rock and Austin having to set their differences aside to battle the Corporate Ministry.
Batista leaving Evolution.
Seth Rollins as Plan B.
The Yes Movement.
Like...come on. There’s countless others.
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Post by UT on May 29, 2019 18:29:23 GMT
And if you want to go even outside of the WWF. The nWo changed the business , and the Horsemen are as iconic as can be. Again arguably the two biggest acts in the history of the WCW.
And the aforementioned Bullet Club did something similar for NJPW from what I can gather.
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Post by Shootist on May 29, 2019 19:54:31 GMT
I had the Dangerous Alliance at number 7. Outside of the 1988 version of the Horsemen maybe the most talent laden stable ever put together (the WCW version.) That run was relatively short though and their centerpiece in Rude didn't get the WCW title which would have enhanced that faction further. Still they had a bunch of great matches in various combinations and it felt like a more unified stable. I'm not real familiar with the AWA version but I do remember Paul E's first run in the NWA feuding with Corny's Midnight Express which was fun. ECW still hadn't fully make the transition into what it became with with guys like Snuka and Muraco in his stable, that version felt watered down from what WCW did. 911 choke slamming jabronies at random was probably the best part of that incarnation. KING KID check out: Sting/Steamboat vs Rude/Austin Clash Of Champions Jan. 1992 Sting, Steamboat, Windham, Rhodes vs Rude, Arn, Eaton, Zbyszko- Saturday Night Feb. 1992 Windham/Dustin vs Austin/Zbyszko- Superbrawl II Steve Austin vs. Barry Windham 2/3 falls- Saturday Night April 1992 Rick Rude breaks Ricky Steamboat's nose- May 1992 War Games 1992 Steamboat/Rude- Ironman Beach Blast 1992 Windham vs Arn- Saturday Night June 1992
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Post by RT on May 29, 2019 19:58:37 GMT
And if you want to go even outside of the WWF. The nWo changed the business , and the Horsemen are as iconic as can be. Again arguably the two biggest acts in the history of the WCW. And the aforementioned Bullet Club did something similar for NJPW from what I can gather. Bullet Club made NJPW. They wouldn’t be touring the US or have even close to as many North American fans as they do now if it weren’t for them. Devitt/Anderson/Fale/Tonga started it and made it a threat. AJ Styles legitimized it and grabbed fans overseas. Kenny Omega & The Young Bucks monetized it.
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Post by PB on May 29, 2019 20:07:24 GMT
I love the Dangerous Alliance. My first exposure to older wrestling was an hour of classic 1992ish WCW each week on Sky Sports with the Dangerous Alliance being the focus of the show. I fell in love with them instantly. Heyman was perfect and as someone who just missed out on Austin's peak (I only started watching wrestling in 2000) it started my love affair with Austin. Watching the Dangerous Alliance stuff made me realise he was definitely more than just the guy who everybody loves more than the Rock for some weird reason.
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Post by Shootist on May 29, 2019 21:49:17 GMT
Bullet Club made NJPW. They wouldn’t be touring the US or have even close to as many North American fans as they do now if it weren’t for them. Devitt/Anderson/Fale/Tonga started it and made it a threat. AJ Styles legitimized it and grabbed fans overseas. Kenny Omega & The Young Bucks monetized it. :\ I don’t know man. They were around for 40 something years before BC. I don’t know much about them but.. I highly doubt they were just some scrub company before BC. They drew record gates in 1995 with the UWFi invasion (inspiration for the nWo) which peak Bullet Club still didn't meet. They had a drop off when everyone else did in the early 2000's. Bullet Club was crucial to them getting a more global foothold in the 2010's. In Japan it's still not 90's peak but New Japan is a more global brand now.
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Post by thereallt on May 29, 2019 21:56:44 GMT
C'mon, that's just disrespectful. NJPW was doing huge business across the globe when the members of the Bullet Club were still in their daddy's balls.
At most, The Bullet Club helped NJPW gain a foothold in North America.
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Post by RT on May 29, 2019 23:59:52 GMT
I left out the “What it is today,” part. My bad.
Obviously it was doing well before them. But there’s definitely a pre/post Bullet Club era that NJPW is enjoying being on the post side of.
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Post by RT on May 30, 2019 2:12:41 GMT
I left out the “What it is today,” part. My bad. Obviously it was doing well before them. But there’s definitely a pre/post Bullet Club era that NJPW is enjoying being on the post side of. You should have just doubled down instead of backtracking. This thread would have been so much more fun if the pre-BC NJPW nerds got completely offended. I'll admit I thought about it but I'd just be trolling. I legit made an error while typing out my thought and it came across as completely different than I intended. Also I'm not versed enough in Japanese wrestling history to keep it up. Everything that happened in Japan prior to like, Wrestle Kingdom being a thing, I'm stupid on. I have no idea what happened like pre-2009. And even most stuff beyond 5 years ago is foggy at best because I barely paid attention outside of guys I liked following. Was NJPW even a thing in the 90s?
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Post by Shootist on May 30, 2019 2:44:56 GMT
You should have just doubled down instead of backtracking. This thread would have been so much more fun if the pre-BC NJPW nerds got completely offended. I'll admit I thought about it but I'd just be trolling. I legit made an error while typing out my thought and it came across as completely different than I intended. Also I'm not versed enough in Japanese wrestling history to keep it up. Everything that happened in Japan prior to like, Wrestle Kingdom being a thing, I'm stupid on. I have no idea what happened like pre-2009. And even most stuff beyond 5 years ago is foggy at best because I barely paid attention outside of guys I liked following. Was NJPW even a thing in the 90s?  Plus WCW/NJPW had three supershows at the Tokyo Dome that aired on PPV. Two of those cards were the same date as what is now known as Wrestle Kingdom. If you were a WCW fan you would have been more prone to be exposed to New Japan. Muta, Chono and Liger etc. also made appearances for WCW. Plus there was a New Japan nWo faction in early to mid 1997 with Muta, Chono, Tenzan and a few others I'm blanking on. New Japan was big in the 90's, it's just there weren't as many avenues as today to get the product more exposure.
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Post by Baker on May 30, 2019 2:45:15 GMT
Aww yeah. Now we're talking. I tried to be fair by placing the Dangerous Alliance at #6. If this were strictly favorites I'd have had them at #3 or #4. Love the DA. And I will gladly take on the role of PW's resident Dangerous Alliance fanboy for this post.....
I don't know anything about the AWA DA and very little about the ECW version. So I'll be focusing on the WCW incarnation. For starters, I think the DA is the greatest collection of talent ever assembled in one stable. Rude. Austin. Arn. Eaton. Zbyszko. Dangerously. Look at those names! 5 in ring Hall of Famers + a HoF manager. Oh, and WWE HoFer Madusa as their valet too. They were the elite before The Elite. A few other factions had 4 all time greats. A bloated stable here and there may have had 5, but, if so, they were offset by some lowcard jabronies. The DA had no weak links. 5 wrestler's wrestlers....5 heel's heels....5 all time greats. Peak DA didn't last very long. Only about 6 months from November 91-May 92. Peak DA ended when they lost the GOAT War Games match and Zbyszko got kicked out. It limped along for a few more months but wasn't the same. (I don't remember Hayes in the DA at all. I thought that whole Arn/Eaton/Hayes thing was post-DA? Stupid Michael Hayes killing everything good....) Yet they crammed a lot of goodness into that short 6 month peak period. I wasn't 100% sure on the DA's origin story so I consulted Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dangerous_Alliance Sounds good. For the bulk of their run the DA controlled all of WCW's major titles save the WCW Championship itself. Rude was the US Champ mainly feuding with Steamboat & Sting. Austin was the TV Champ feuding primarily with Dustin. Arn & Eaton were the tag champs feuding mainly with the Steiners. And Zbyszko had a heated feud with Windham with no titles at stake. Other DA rivals included Nikita, Simmons, Pillman & Bagwell. The DA had some great babyface foils. They absolutely worked as a cohesive unit by interfering in each others matches and having big tags bouts just about every week. It was similar to Evolution's stellar 2004 run or I imagine the Shield's big run a few years back with great heels vs. great babyfaces in lengthy tag matches most every week. Rude was their ace. Austin was the Ortonesque up and coming cocky young heel. Arn & Eaton were the tag team specialists coming together to form the ultimate unit. And my man Larry was admittedly weirdly cast as the most dangerous member of them all. He adopted the nickname "The Cruncher" after famously 'crunching' Barry Windham's hand in a car door. They basically followed the old Horsemen formula. They weren't more important than The Horsemen. They weren't around long, and never holding the WCW Championship hurts them. But I wouldn't argue too strenuously if some contrarian wanted to say they were actually better than The Horsemen. I won't make that argument, mind you, but I think it does have some merit. 5 > 4, Dangerously > JJ, 92 War Games > Any Horsemen War Games, etc. ------------------------------------ Storytime~! The weird thing is as much as I love the Dangerous Alliance, I actually never saw them in real time due to not getting WCW tv in my area circa 91-92. I didn't even know they existed until late 95-early 96 when my then best friend Rick brought over a tape of the January 92 Clash of the Champions. That show had a great intro with footage of the DA's dastardly deeds while a killer Dangerously promo played in voiceover form. I was instantly hooked on the DA. The January 92 Clash was basically their show. The top two matches were DA tags and the hook for this show was Dangerously vowing to send one of the top babyfaces to the hospital. We also got a great JRism where he referred to Dangerously as "The Psycho Yuppie From Scarsdale." This was actually the moment where I became a Paul Heyman fan. As strange as it sounds today I probably hadn't thought about the guy in 5 years. Out of sight, out of mind. Kiddie me didn't like him anyway due to associating him with those phony jerks, the so-called "Original" Midnight Express. But, yeah, this show turned me into a DA enthusiast. I watched the hell out of it and would have put it on my Greatest WCW/NWA Clashes/PPV list had that scoundrel UT not cancelled that potentially awesome countdown. I did a lot of geeky things with my wrestling mags. One of the nerdiest was circling every mention of a DA member or the Dangerous Alliance itself in the months following my initial exposure to them. One of the first things I did when I got online in early 1998 was go on a tape buying spree. Those early purchases included a lot of ECW & NWA, a bit of Japanese wrestling, and my beloved Dangerous Alliance comp. Again, I watched the hell out of that tape, and most of what I know about the DA comes from there. I won't do a lengthy DA match list because there's just so much goodness but you should all watch the 1992 War Games match. It's widely considered the GOAT War Games, if not the GOAT WCW match, period. Check out the DA bits from the January 92 Clash too. Oh, and the original storyline was Heyman wanting to take over and ultimately destroy WCW through the DA as revenge for WCW suspending him. Meaning in this post.... The Dangerous Alliance were arguably better than the Horsemen and inspired the NWO, who they were definitely better than. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. *I love that pic UT selected. New avatar time. Dangerous Alliance 4 Life.
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Post by Strobe on May 30, 2019 12:44:18 GMT
Was NJPW even a thing in the 90s? Antonio Inoki was one of the two main proteges of the father of puroresu Rikidozan and founded New Japan in 1972 (the other being Giant Baba who founded All Japan later the same year). Throughout the 70s and 80s, he become a massive star in Japan and known throughout the world, notably through his bout with Muhammad Ali and his match in Pakistan with Pahalwan. He tried to portray pro wrestling as the strongest fighting style and put on worked proto-MMA fights, such as against Leon Spinks. The Ali fight was an actual shoot when Ali's people thought it would be a work, so they agreed on shit rules that made it incredibly dull. He coined the phrase Strong Style in regards to his pro wrestling. In the early 80s, the original Tiger Mask (Satoru Sayama) was a big TV ratings draw. This was during a time when wrestling brought in high TV figures in primetime slots in Japan (for comparison today, New Japan is screened in the middle of the night on the weekend; although it isn't directly comparable since we have streaming today, it is still telling). In the mid-80s, you had break away promotions from New Japan with Choshu's JPW (where he first went to be an invader into AJPW) and the shoot style feds - Sayama's Shooto and Maeda's UWF. This led to invasion angles that did big business. Starting in the late 80s, NJPW started running Dome Shows (see list below) and did phenomenal business with them for over a decade. Hashimoto became the Ace in the mid-90s and headlined more 40k+ crowds than anyone else in that decade. The invasion of Takada's UWFi (the offshoot of Maeda's UWF from the 80s) was the biggest money drawing angle of all-time in Japan (three 54k+ crowds in 6 months) and inspired Bischoff to do the nWo angle. During this stretch in the mid-90s, they were the most profitable wrestling promotion in the world. I would imagine by some way as well. In the late 90s/early 00s, Inoki killed off his biggest draw by having legit judoka Ogawa go over him repeatedly and never gave Hash the big win in the end that it should have built to. Inoki decided to go hard on his pro wrestling is the strongest stance again, but this time MMA did exist. So he started pushing wrestlers from legit backgrounds even if they weren't over enough to justify the push and started booking his own wrestlers in actual MMA fights, which they would often lose, killing their credibility. Business fell off a cliff. You can see the drop in the Dome crowds below. They were able to be spiked by running interpromotional dream matches, but those were short term fixes. One month after the 16,000-attended Dome Show in Oct 2005, Inoki's controlling share in New Japan was bought by Yuke's (of WWF/E video game fame). Under the new ownership, Tanahashi eventually became the new Ace and did a very impressive job of bringing the company back up. The likes of Okada, Omega and the Bullet Club have helped continue that and with the wonders of the internet, expanding into the US market has become a possibility. They are not close to their former success, but from how low they sank, they are in excellent shape. The 13 WKs (2007 until today) have drawn 373k fans. Compare that to them drawing 381k fans to 7 Tokyo Dome shows over 2 and a half years (Oct 95 to April 98). And that isn't even counting the three other Dome shows during that period, of which the most successful WK (which it is by over 5k) only outdrew one and that was by 500 fans.
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Post by RT on May 30, 2019 13:31:51 GMT
Guys I was joking but thanks. :lol:
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Post by Strobe on May 30, 2019 16:18:12 GMT
The DA deserve their own thread full of links to the angles/matches that define them. A fantastic 6-month stretch. In terms of match quality in such a short span, especially if you consider some of the stuff during their formation and separation, it is hard to think of anyone that compares.
They are hurt historically by having such a short run and coming during a downturn business and popularity wise.
Not holding the World Title doesn't feel as significant as it would've at other periods because Sting still felt like the Ace of the promotion when Rude defeated him for the US Title.
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Post by UT on May 30, 2019 18:27:55 GMT
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Post by UT on May 30, 2019 18:33:01 GMT
I know that some people hate on Evolution and even heard it called HHH's cosplay as The Horsemen but they were a pretty great faction during their run and featured one of the best breakups and face turns of all time when Batista won the rumble. I know it could get old watching them dominate but at the same time I don't hate moments or eras like that in wrestling because it creates fiery babyfaces. Also they have one of the best themes of all time.
The concept of Evolution itself was brilliant and worked as well, sadly I think the concept has become overplayed and overused by every fantasy booker/stable maker since thinking that every single faction needs a legend , a current stud and future studs and it gets a little annoying. I get that it's awesome but it doesn't have the be the basis of every stable.
Their return in 2014 cemented them as even higher for me , those matches with The Shield were all so much fucking fun and was a time where I genuinely LOVED wrestling again and they deserve credit for that.
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