“I understand you’ve been running from the man
That goes by the name of the Sandman
He flies the sky like an eagle in the eye
Of a hurricane that’s abandoned”
-America,
“Sandman”
You’re frustrated. You’ve been battling uphill for some time now, wanting to get somewhere that you just can’t reach. Fully aware that you have to earn it, that you aren’t entitled, you keep trudging on. If it was easy, anyone could do it, right?
But you find yourself in your lowest and darkest moments. You bash your head against the wall until that crimson stream trickles down; you don’t even notice or care that it is stinging, possibly contaminating your eye. You’re lost and helpless. Why can’t I do this? Why can’t I get there?
All the while you don’t see what you’re doing and what is behind you on that troublesome road. You’re not there because you’re still a few miles from your destination – you just can’t see it yet. And though it may be getting smaller in the rearview mirror, those monuments and stops and moments you’ve made along the way grow in size and importance in your absence.
That feels like the Prince Devitt of New Japan Pro Wrestling before he was reborn as Finn Balor in World Wrestling Entertainment. While the latter isn’t known as much to reference the outer world of wrestling that surrounds it unless it really has to (well, until recently under the new regime), a fan can’t help but connect the dots from what once was to what is now. That’s one of the beauties of wrestling – the past dictates the future.
The tale of the Irish wrestler starts from humble beginnings, of training and living in a dojo, cleaning and doing laundry for those higher up the totem pole than him as he gained loss after loss in the squared circle. He was alone in a country that spoke a language he didn’t know, with people he didn’t know. But he was in the company of the lion crest, where steel is forged.
Yet, his dreams extended to a stratosphere so high that he kept on the high road, doing his best to do things the right way. He teamed up with one of NJPW’s mainstays, Ryusuke Taguchi, forming one of the promotion’s popular tag teams, Apollo 55. As a result, Devitt’s Emerald Isle smile would continue to spread as he won Junior Heavyweight gold in both singles and tag team competition.
Of course, sometimes we falter and fall, and with that comes impatience so deep that it touches the branches and the roots and the soul and the heart of Prince Devitt, poisoning it through the veins over time until that unfortunate loss at NJPW’s 41st Anniversary Event in 2013, that lead to his betrayal against Ryusuke Taguchi and the genesis of the Bullet Club. From the moment he declared himself the “Real RocknRolla”, Prince Devitt changed the game.
And the club grew and grew. Bad Luck Fale, Karl Anderson, Tama Tonga, The Young Bucks. All hungry foreigners that wanted to possess the glory and the gold in Japan. Of course, this would see most of the team to see varying levels of success, while Devitt still maintained his Junior Heavyweight reign.
Now, there was backup. Now, there was power. It grew and grew, with wins over former IWGP Heavyweight champions, seeing Devitt’s goal of becoming the first simultaneous Junior Heavyweight and Heavyweight champion in NJPW seem all the more…realistic?
During this time, Prince Devitt would decorate his body in paint, just showing how far gone he was and what lengths he would go to now that his inner demons were winning. There was nothing in there but hunger and greed and violence. An unhealthy mixture befitting of a human time bomb.
As the Bullet Club gained notoriety in Japan, their stock rose – yet Devitt couldn’t gain that Heavyweight belt he so painfully longed for. Despite uprooting everything about himself and changing everything, not just for him but his colleagues, he still couldn’t get the job done and in the end, he was stuck where he’s always been – destined to be a Junior Heavyweight.
He couldn’t beat Okada, he couldn’t beat his greatest hurdle in Tanahashi, and he couldn’t beat the man he once called a friend in Taguchi.
Maybe a change was in order, for maybe living in a place where everyone understood you. Sure, there’d be a name change but it was a new beginning – all of it. This “new beginning” was WWE, and the opportunity in America was so tantalizing, so juicy that he wanted to take a bite and just feel the sweetness overtake him. The man who would eat was now rechristened as Finn Balor.
He wouldn’t come alone, however, as his inner demons became less metaphorical and more supernatural. What was once a symbol of how corrupted he was under his own desire and greed became a crutch for when he couldn’t get the job done himself.
And how delicious it was, how delicious he would live as he was destined for NXT prestige, a reunion with the Good Brothers, and to be the inaugural Universal Champion.
That’s where Balor’s troubles began. That damn shoulder injury, the multiple losses to Bobby Lashley and Baron Corbin, and just meandering aimlessly until a snap of the neck by “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt would send him back to NXT.
The brush with evil had corrupted Balor’s vessel once more, but no paint was needed. The Prince was back, and he claimed all for himself. Try as he might to stay cocky and bold, he learned to trust while still being that Real RocknRolla who would pele kick your head off if you so much as thought about crossing him. Once he regained the NXT title once more, he had little need to reach a Demon, for he was operating on a whole different level that many in the WWE couldn’t quite reach. That’s because they don’t make the cloth that he was cut from anymore, to paraphrase the man himself.
Yet, time is but a circle and sometimes we are destined to follow its orbit. Balor was bound for the main roster once more, and though his matches were beyond spectacular, he couldn’t quite win again.
That’s when he dipped into familiar territory as Balor joined Edge’s Judgment Day, and ousted him upon initiation. He’s back in the dark side with Damian Priest and Rhea Ripley, and again he will find that he doesn’t need backup, he needs to trust himself and push himself despite a wall of opposition holding him back.
A hurdle such as this confronts us all is only that – a hurdle. A setback.
Once he composes himself and wipes the blood and sweat from his brow, he will become that steel that was forged in the East and will take what he needs to become the extraordinary man he has always been. Some people are rocketed to the top with little opposition, and some are meant to claw and fight and crawl and trudge onward until the battle is won.
The time for the Judgment Day will come, but what will be left upon his rapture? Will he fight off his demons or let them overtake him? Only time will tell, be it now or in his final year when he gives the inevitable coup de gras. Only time will tell.
