We are finally seeing the crossover between Impact Wrestling and All Elite Wrestling taking shape, as Impact Tag Team Champions Karl Anderson and Doc (Luke) Gallows invaded Dynamite this past week, joining Kenny Omega to beat down former AEW Champion Jon Moxley.
In addition, the AEW Tag Team Champions Matt and Nick Jackson joined them in the ring after to do a celebratory ‘Too Sweet’ as the show went off the air. For those of you unfamiliar, this is the sign of the Bullet Club, one of the most tenured factions in professional wrestling.
Situated primarily in New Japan Pro Wrestling, they have also made appearances in Ring of Honor. Other notable alumni of the stable besides the five men mentioned include Cody Rhodes, AJ Styles, Finn Balor (then known as Prince Devitt) and the Undisputed Era’s Adam Cole.
But even on AEW, the name Bullet Club wasn’t mentioned on air. They were casually referred to as ‘the band’, alongside Don Callus, who isn’t known as having ever been a member of the Bullet Club. But for wrestling fans who are familiar, they knew who they were talking about.
This brings me to how in the WWE members of the Bullet Club were booked in an attempt to highlight that group in an American version. Unfortunately, unlike the Japanese version, this was met without much success.
Gallows and Anderson made their debut on WWE television in 2016, bypassing NXT. Their compatriot from Japan, AJ Styles, made his debut at that year’s Royal Rumble. This ‘mini reunion’ of Bullet Club came at the heel turn of AJ Styles, and they had a strong run facing off John Cena, until the 2016 WWE draft split them up. Styles went on to Smackdown to become a two time WWE Champion, while Gallows and Anderson won the RAW Tag Team Titles.
The second time a Bullet Club-lite reunion surfaced was after Finn Balor came back from injury on RAW, and started teaming up with Gallows and Anderson as a baby-face faction. However, this was short lived and Balor went off to focus on a singles run on RAW while the ‘Good Brothers’ gimmick of Gallows and Anderson started emerging, but they were reduced to minor roles and even comedy acts.
Styles and the duo reunited for one more run as a villainous faction, now re-branded as ‘The O.C.”, before Gallows and Anderson were part of the massive release of talent and personnel by WWE in 2020 during the COVID 19 pandemic. The one last highlight they had as a group was that Gallows and Anderson (technically) were in a main event of Night One of 2020’s Wrestlemania, when they interfered during the Undertaker / AJ Styles Boneyard Match.
Since then, AJ Styles is now paired with a giant individual named ‘Omos’, Balor is NXT Champion and Cole has for years been part of the Undisputed Era and recently concluded the longest reign as champion on the black and yellow brand. “The Good Brothers” Gallows and Anderson made their Impact debut on Slammiversary and recently became Impact Tag Team Champions. They are set to team with Omega on the ‘Hard to Kill’ pay per view in a six man tag against Impact Champion Rich Swann and the Motor City Machine Guns.
Given what we saw on this past week’s Dynamite, an appearance by the Young Bucks during that match would blow Impact’s ratings through the roof. The stage could be set for a Bullet Club style reunion across two of American’s current major wrestling promotions. As for WWE, if the past track record is any indication, they either are not interested in doing anything Bullet Club related or lack an understanding of how to book them properly.
But they still have Styles, Balor and Cole left in their rosters. Cole is primarily identified with the Undisputed Era in WWE, but if he ever splits with that group, the possibility of him aligning with Styles and Balor may be the last shot of giving some WWE flavor to cementing a Bullet Club presence in American, and the world’s, biggest wrestling promotion.
An average professional doing the 9-5 grind who really loves wrestling across all platforms. Here's hoping wrestlers finally get some basic workers rights in 2021.
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