Tama Tonga reflects on the seven year history of one of wrestling history’s most dominant factions
Since Dontaku 2013, BULLET CLUB has not only been a major force in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, but the entire wrestling world. Through many changes over the years, Tama Tonga has been a consistent driving force since day 1. We caught up with Tama remotely to discuss the impact the group has had on the industry.
BULLET CLUB was a long term investment
–So Tama, first of all, congratulations on BULLET CLUB’s seventh anniversary.
Tama: Thank you.
–Did you think in 2013 that BULLET CLUB would still be going strong seven years later?
Tama: Yes. Absolutely. Why wouldn’t I?
–Well, pro-wrestling is notoriously turbulent. Even the most successful groups like the nWo haven’t lasted as long as BULLET CLUB has.
Tama: I don’t think about things in the short term. I’m a long term planner. BULLET CLUB is an investment to me, and I was always going to make a long term investment with my time and my energy.
–You had faith this was going to continue.
Tama: And that it will continue for more than seven years. Forever. I believe in what I do, and BULLET CLUB is what I’m doing. I know what we did reminds a lot of people about the nWo, and I respect everything that came before me, but really, I don’t give a s**t about what they did. I give a s**t about what I do, building this thing with its own identity.
We were all outsiders. It was only natural we would come together
–Let’s go back to the beginnings of BULLET CLUB. You, Bad Luck Fale, Karl Anderson and Prince Devitt came together at Dontaku 2013. What were your interactions with one another like before BULLET CLUB formed?
Tama: We were four foreigners, in a Japanese company in Japan. We spoke English which gave us a common ground anyway, and we were all outsiders. Nobody knew what we were going through better than we did, so it was natural that we would talk to one another and natural that we would be friendly with one another.
–You would second Karl Anderson in his matches in the early part of 2013.
Tama: He taught me everything about this business. You have to understand I was very young at the time, very green and really didn’t understand how the game was played, so to speak.
–At Invasion Attack 2013 in Ryogoku, Prince Devitt turned on Apollo 55 teammate Ryusuke Taguchi and enlisted Bad Luck Fale as his bodyguard (watch here!). In hindsight, this would be the beginnings of BULLET CLUB, but were you aware of that at the time?
Tama: No. Fale had gotten the chance to do something I hadn’t, which was go on foreign excursion. I’d been away but only for a few weeks at a time, so my experience was different. All I knew was Fale had come back, and he was with Devitt.
–And did Anderson react to any of this at the time?
Tama: All I knew was that Karl was my mentor and my senpai. I’d go where he did. Everything apart from that, I didn’t know about at all. So when it all went down, I was just ‘OK, this is what we’re doing now’.
Karl Anderson and Pricne Devitt taught me and Fale what being a heel meant
–After Karl Anderson faced Hiroshi Tanahashi at Dontaku 2013, Devitt and Fale attacked. Anderson hit Tanahashi with a Gun Stun and the four of you officially formed BULLET CLUB. (Watch here!)
Tama: Machine Gun was my mentor. I didn’t really question the whys of it, because I was really still kind of a young boy. So I didn’t fully understand more than doing my job of being with Anderson, and Devitt was the lead guy.
–BULLET CLUB were instantly getting a huge amount of hate from the fans. When Devitt won Best of the Super Junior in Korakuen Hall that year, it was one of the most intense crowd reactions I can remember. (Watch here!)
Tama: It was wild in those early days.
–And you were still very young in your career eliciting those reactions.
Tama: Karl Anderson and Prince Devitt taught me and Fale about being a heel. We were completely green. Fale had just come from rugby, me from the military. We didn’t know s**t about wrestling. They told us ‘if you’re getting that reaction, that heat, you’re doing your job. The more they hate us, the better we’re doing’.
–And you ran with that.
Tama: Exactly. I didn’t know better than what they told me, but the more heat we got, the more we were thinking how to make everybody even more angry. They taught me the psychology of all that, making our opponents mad and making the fans mad.
–It sounds like you Devitt and Anderson gave you the direction you needed.
Tama: Me and Fale were just along for the ride at the start. We really didn’t know anything, and they taught us everything.
We had a goal. We were going to make it to the top
–Did some part of you want the fans approval?
Tama: No, not at all. Maybe some people might have felt a different way, but when Devitt said that, about doing your job if you get heat, I was just hungry for more. Making the other wrestlers want to jump us, hell, making the fans want to run in the ring and jump us.
–What was the philosophy of the group at that point? Why were you so hungry for that heat?
Tama: We had a goal. We were going to make it to the top. We had to maneuver to keep changing the game and keep making an impact, and the best way to do that was to not play by the rules, to get noticed even if some people might say it was for the wrong reasons.
–That was the heel perspective.
Tama: Yeah. That was our job. And when I knew that, I was going to elevate my game and our game as a heel to two or three levels beyond. The one thing that I didn’t know is that sometimes when you’re good as a heel, the people turn you babyface and start cheering.
AJ got all of us together and asked how we could make this work
–Fans really appeared to get behind BULLET CLUB when AJ Styles was at the head of the group. Invasion Attack 2014 saw Prince Devitt leave NJPW, and Styles instantly take the lead.
Tama: That was the situation we found ourselves in, and we adapted. We found ourselves with Devitt leaving, and we found ourselves with Styles coming in. We just thought, ‘OK, here’s our new guy’, and he was great.
–What was your first meeting with AJ like?
Tama: He was very grounded. Very humble, down to earth. He just got all of us together and said ‘however we can make this work, for all of us, let me know’. And I knew then that he was in it for all of us, for the whole group. We adapted with who we had, and it worked.
–What do you think would have happened had Styles not been there in 2014. Would Karl Anderson have taken the lead, do you think?
Tama: That’s a tough question, honestly I don’t know. Anderson wouldn’t quite be the front guy. He’s like a second in command. A guy that keeps the group together in a common vision, but…
–Not quite a leader?
Tama: Oh, that’s not it at all. Second in commands, sometimes, they have all the power.
–‘The hand behind the throne’
Tama: Exactly (laughs). In the end, everything happened that was supposed to happen.
–At this point in your career, you were gaining experience, but you weren’t in the tag team spot you are now. How would you describe your position in the group during that 2014-2015 period?
Tama: I’d say I was the workhorse. I was the guy who tried to elevate everybody else. If there was a hit that needed to be taken, somebody that needed to put their body on the line, then I would be there for that too. I was a soldier, the workhorse.
With Yujiro in, we went from foreign heels to outright heels
–At Dontaku 2014, AJ Styles beat Kazuchika Okada for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. In the process, Yujiro Takahashi turned on Okada and CHAOS to join BULLET CLUB. (Watch here!)
Tama: That was an important moment for all of us.
–Before Yujiro joined, there was a sense that BULLET CLUB was a stable of foreign wrestlers, but Yujiro was important as the first Japanese member.
Tama: He was perfect. He was the gateway to open us up to Japan. We were foreign bad guys, outsiders, and now Yujiro, he made us an overall force. We weren’t the ‘foreign heel’ group, we were *the* heel group at that point.
–BULLET CLUB expanded very quickly during this period. Did everybody get along?
Tama: Well, I always get along with everybody, but I’m sure everyone else has a little bit of chemistry going on (laughs). But that’s evolution. If you want to get better, you have to adapt, and if you stay small, well that’s where you’ll always be. If you want to get bigger you have to learn how to get along with more people.
We had to stop and say ‘woah, there are people in here that shouldn’t be in here’
–The comparisons to nWo were very strong at this point, in terms of how popular you were, but also how many personalities were being very quickly added.
Tama: We were trying different things and different people. We nipped it in the bud I think,… There were experiments we had to try or we wouldn’t know.
–What do you mean by ‘nipping it in the bud’?
Tama: It did feel a little too fast. We had a lot of guys in there and we had to stop and say ‘woah, there are people in here that should not be in here.
–El Terrible was one of the Mexican members of the club, and at the G1 Climax 24 finals Jeff Jarrett and Scott D’Amore put the BC shirts on.
Tama: It was a case of refocusing, thinking a bit about how to control things. But we were at the height of success and popularity and we had to adapt and figure out where things should go.
–NJPW was beginning to appeal to international audiences as well from the mid-2010s. Not just in New Japan crowds, but every wrestling crowd in the world seemed to be mostly wearing BULLET CLUB shirts.
Tama: Everything was going to plan.
–Did the success take you by surprise?
Tama: I tried to not get caught up in it, really. There was a goal that we always had in mind to get to the top and I tried not to get distracted by any of the stuff outside of that.
In part two, Tama brings us to the present day, and talks about BULLET CLUB’s future plans!
