I'm still trying to wrap my head around Ring of Honor & New Japan's joint decision to add Marty Scurll, the hottest non-Bullet Club act ROH has at the moment, and add him to the Bullet Club, just so they'd have an extra hand in the pool for the current Best of the Super Juniors tournament, as if they didn't have enough already.
Scurll's unique look quickly made him a crowd favorite, even though his very nickname, "The Villain", marks him as a heel. Leave it to the powers that be in ROH to see that and decide that Scurll belonged in Bullet Club, replacing the departing Adam Cole. This is the same kind of booking mistake that killed the nWo in WCW at the end of the last century. Expanding the roster of the "cool heel" stable just because they can. WCW did that way too often between 1997-98, and ultimately killed their golden goose while the ratings took a plunge.
Delirious and his counterparts in New Japan haven't figured out yet that a gimmick like Bullet Club eventually has an expiration date. They don't have a true network to answer to, as ROH is syndicated, mostly on Sinclair-owned channels. Still, it's going to get boring very, very quickly, as it's already borderline stale.
The difference in the booking between the nWo and Bullet Club is as different as night & day. Bullet Club is comprised mostly of young athletes who don't have the miles to them that nWo co-founders Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, & Kevin Nash already had when Eric Bischoff launched the nWo 21 years ago. There are no repetitive run-ins in every main event. With ROH's taping schedule, that's a plus, because if they copied everything nWo did, they'd lose their audience in less than a year.
The Young Bucks, for example, skew more toward DX than the Outsiders. I've already explained Cody, the American Nightmare in a previous column. Kenny Omega has Diamond Dallas Page's 1980's hair, doesn't work in America much for legal reasons, which dilutes his charisma, and for that reason, Bullet Club isn't dominating ROH-TV. Fortunately, they don't have all the gold, just the tag titles right now, as Scurll promptly lost the TV title at the last tapings before leaving for Japan. If Omega could ever clear his legal hurdles here, a match vs. current champ Christopher Daniels would be a money match on PPV for sure.
The only message I have for Bullet Club is this. Just stop adding people. Bischoff blinded himself to the reality that overloading the nWo was detrimental to the gimmick's overall health. You needn't make the same mistake. Though I'm afraid you already have.
