When news broke that "Machine Gun" Karl Anderson was coming to the WWE, many expected him to drop his nickname and ring name. That ended up not being the case, to the surprise of Anderson.
Ever since his exit from New Japan Pro Wrestling earlier this year, Anderson has still had ties to the name and persona created there. From retaining his ring name, to 'The Club' spin-off of The Bullet Club. Anderson said on The Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast recently that he was ready for a change if needed.
“I figured when we took the opportunity to go to WWE that maybe there would be a name change," Anderson said. "If there was, then we were fine with it because, like, it was a chance, we thought, to just get as global as possible. In our defense, or in the positive way we look at it was that we’d done so much cool stuff and so much big stuff with New Japan Pro-Wrestling, and we had gotten our names out there so much that the WWE decided that they didn’t have to change our names, and didn’t want to change our names."
While AJ Styles and Karl Anderson only had to make minor tweaks, such as dropping nicknames and no longer wearing Bullet Club attire, Luke Gallows dropped his "Doc" nickname that he'd adopted in TNA and NJPW. Either way, Anderson has a theory as to why bigger changes weren't made.
"Maybe we had so many fans that recognized us as Karl Anderson, AJ Styles, and Luke Gallows that it’d be kind of silly to change our names. That’s how I looked at it,” Anderson said.
Anderson will now perform alongside Gallows on Raw, while AJ Styles was drafted to Smackdown.
By Fightful Staff
