Bullet Club is definitely not fine as for the first time in the stable’s five year history, a title has changed hands from one sub-group to another. At Wrestling Dontaku Night One, on May 3rd, when Bullet Club was celebrating its five-year anniversary, the team of the Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson) and Marty Scurll defeated former champions, Guerrillas of Destiny (Tama Tonga and Tanga Loa) and Bad Luck Fale, for the New Japan Pro Wrestling NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship.
& your new NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Champs. @MartyScurll @NickJacksonYB @MattJackson13 #WrestlingDontaku2018 #NJPW #YoungBucks #TheVillain #BulletClub #Wrestling #mygif pic.twitter.com/f4XDSpksgy
— Theo 🛸 (@yyzerro) May 3, 2018
Created in 2016, the NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship has been held 15 separate times by 11 different teams, comprised of 24 different wrestlers. For the Young Bucks, this is their third reign with the belt and first in two years. Alongside Kenny Omega and representing The Elite, the Bucks won their first NEVER Openweight title in February 2016, defeating Chaos at Honor Rising: Japan 2016. The trio held the titles for 50 days before dropping to Hiroshi Tanahashi, Michael Elgin and Yoshitatsu. On May 3, 2016, they got the belts back and held them for 61 days before losing to the trio of Matt Sydal, Ricochet and Satoshi Kojima.This is Scurll’s first run with the title and the first for the trio of Scurll and the Young Bucks. Unlike when Omega and the Bucks won, the Scurll/Young Bucks trio is credited as having represented Bullet Club.
The threesome they defeated to win the belts was none other than their stablemates, the team of the Guerrillas of Destiny and Bad Luck Fale, who had held the titles for 118 days. Also representing Bullet Club, this was Fale and Tama Tonga’s third reign with the championship, which they had previously won at New Year Dash! Alongside Tanga Loa, the trio won their first titles as a unit in December 2017, losing the titles to Chaos just over two weeks later. Previously, Tonga and Fale alongside Yujiro Takahashi, contested for the titles in the first-ever NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship match at Wrestle Kingdom 10. Despite losing to Chaos, which was represented by the Briscoe Brothers (Jay and Mark) and Toru Yano, Bullet Club went on to win the rematch, securing their first run with the titles.
https://twitter.com/BulletClubItal/status/991970073026940929
From the start of the match, the six men were respectful with each other, a sentiment that lasted until the very end. In a show of class, Tonga, Loa and Fale took the belts from the referee and presented them to their stablemates.
Perhaps Cody and Kenny Omega could learn from this show of respect and not in-fighting. Or perhaps this was just the calm before the storm as at Night Two, on May 4th, just a day after celebrating five years of existence, the Bullet Club could implode and the civil war could truly begin. That’s because for the first time on this grand a scale, the Bullet Club team of Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga, Tonga Loa, Kota Ibushi and Kenny Omega will be facing the Bullet Club team of Cody, Hangman Page, Marty Scurll, Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson. And it’s highly unlikely that match features the same show of respect this one did.
