David Finlay opens up about his massive heel turn, his taking over of Bullet Club, and his incredible year in NJPW.
The current reigning IWGP NEVER Openweight Champion spoke about all these topics during a recent interview with the NJPW press. Finlay calls this last calendar year the best of his career, one that proves he can be a top talent for the promotion. He adds that the only person who has defeated him recently was SANADA, who is the current world champion.
Everything is going according to plan. I said last year to expect me, and I don’t think people knew what to expect. But I had this in the works for a very long time. I’m having a killer year- the best of my career. The only one that’s been able to beat me one on one is SANADA, and he’s the IWGP World Heavyweight Champion. That’s the only guy that’s been able to come anywhere close.`
Finlay then discusses how he came up in the dojo system, but states that once he decided to be himself he saw a path towards superstardom.
When I first came to Japan, I was this 21 year old kid and they told me that ‘oh, if you just follow the system, if you do things the Japanese way, you’ll get X,Y,Z’ but that never happened to me. I started noticing that the people that were successful- Juice Robinson got successful when he dropped the façade and became his true self. Jay White did the same. In the end I realized that opportunities don’t get handed to you, you have to take them.
Later, Finlay talks taking over Bullet Club and bringing in a bunch of killers like Alex Coughlin and Clark Connors.
Well, Clark, Gabe and Alex all had similar paths to mine. They were all told to follow Shibata’s path as laid out for them, and what happened? They got forgotten while Shibata goes off playing Pure Champion in Ring of Honor. They saw themselves in me, and I saw myself in them. In my BULLET CLUB, I really don’t care about popularity or what the fans think. I’ve been saying it and I’ll say again, this is for killers and savages only. I want every member to be carrying championship gold, and If you can’t carry gold, you bring me bodies.
You can check out the full interview here.