AJ Styles, Bullet Club Members React to Finn Balor's Heel Turn

Finn Balor shocked the wrestling world on Wednesday night when he turned heel for the first time [...]

By Connor Casey

Finn Balor shocked the wrestling world on Wednesday night when he turned heel for the first time in his WWE career by attacking Johnny Gargano during the final moments of NXT. What was supposed to be a showdown with The Undisputed Era turned into a mugging, as the four attacked Tommaso Ciampa in the ring while Balor focused exclusively on "Johnny Wrestling," hitting him with his 1916 finisher on the entrance ramp. But instead of throwing up the hand "UE" hand sign to show his alliance to Adam Cole's faction, Balor simply pointed two finger guns at Gargano's head to close the show.

This sent Wrestling Twitter into a frenzy, given that Balor was calling back to his days as "The Real Rock'n Rolla" Prince Devitt, the original leader of the Bullet Club heel faction in New Japan. A number of past and present Bullet Club members took to Twitter to react to Balor's sudden turn.

"What took you so long, Prince..?" Karl Anderson tweeted.

"Nice to see the old friend back," New Japan's Tama Tonga wrote.

Balor famously launched the Bullet Club as a heel faction alongside Anderson, Tonga and Bad Luck Fale. Over the years the group would explode in numbers, bringing in big names like Styles, Cole The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, Cody Rhodes, Marty Scurll, Kenta and Jay White (the group's current leader). In his final match before leaving New Japan for WWE, Balor was kicked out of the group in April 2014 and was replaced by Styles as the new leader. Once Styles, Gallows and Anderson all jumped ship to WWE in 2016 fans were hopeful that a new iteration of Bullet Club would appear in WWE involving all four former members, but Balor rarely crossed paths with the other three.

That was until SummerSlam back in August, when The O.C. popped up backstage alongside Balor before his match with "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt. Styles told the Irish wrestler that all he would need to do is say the word and they would come running to help him. Balor stayed silent, and wound up getting squashed by the demonic force in just three minutes and written off of television for two months.

Balor officially returned to NXT back on the Oct. 2 episode, then stated afterwards that he would be staying with the Yellow and Black Brand moving forward.

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