Tanga Loa Talks Bullet Club Splitting From The Elite, NJPW’s Tag Team Division Needing Growth

Bullet Club’s Tanga Loa speaks on Bullet Club getting to return to its roots.

In an interview with Andrew Thompson of Post Wrestling, Loa talked about the split between The Elite (Kenny Omega, Hangman Page, Marty Scurll and The Young Bucks) and Bullet Club. That split came at the G1 Special in San Francisco in 2018 and Loa said Bullet Club needed to go back and figure out what it meant to be a part of the faction and go back to its root.

“One, I think you could see fans could see there was a real difference in the Bullet Club at that time, and Kenny [Omega] and The Bucks are amazing talents, and then Cody of course, was a part of Bullet Club at that time too. Marty [Scurll] was too, and I think when two of the members, the original members of Bullet Club feel like the club is not holding on to its roots, the tradition, that mindset of what started Bullet Club, I think they felt it necessary to pump the brakes and establish what it meant to be a part of Bullet Club, and San Francisco, I think was that point where we had to draw the line in the sand,” Loa said.

Although Loa and Tama Tonga have long been one of NJPW’s top tag teams, the duo have been talking about growing the tag team division. Loa noted NJPW’s working relationships with a number of companies such as ROH and CMLL, but those relationships are not fully being utilized to help support the division.

“I know Tama and I talk about it all the time. We truly believe it needs growth in the tag team division. There’s different companies who have really good tag teams but we’re not working alongside them. New Japan works alongside ROH and CMLL and then RevPro, and I do believe we were gonna have — this last Tag League, we were supposed to have Aussie Open (Kyle Fletcher & Mark Davis) as a part of our tag tour. So he [Mark Davis] tore his ACL but we did have a great match with them at the Copper Box in London for our Royal Quest show and they’re a phenomenal team and there’s a lot of phenomenal teams out there. Unfortunately, we’re not in charge of how tag teams come into play but I know whenever Tama and I have off from the New Japan schedule, we talk about trying to get in somewhere with an independent show to test out a tag team. It’s a recruiting tour as well for us to let the office know, ‘Hey, there’s a tag team here or there that you guys should take a look at. We work well with them. They might be good for the junior weight division and/or the heavyweight division, depending on the size and their athletic ability,’” Loa said.

Fellow Bullet Club Bad Luck Fale spoke Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp and you can listen to the whole interview at this link.