Clark Connors on The Last Outfit Group Name Change To The Cut, His Belief Drilla Moloney Would Fit In The Cut, War Dogs Being Able To Get From Out Of Bullet Club’s Shadow In NJPW, & NJPW of America Shutting Down

Fightful held a recent interview with Clark Connors. One of the topics discussed included Connors’ thoughts about Jay White’s new group initially being called The Last Outfit only to quickly get a name change to The Cut.

“We kind of created this group kind of quickly on the fly, right? The name, to a lot of people, is obviously very important for people. But, it’s more about the feeling, and for us it was we didn’t — we still don’t even really care about the name as much as it’s we want to show what we are, what we can do, and a name comes. War Dogs — when we started the War Dogs — was not cool. It’s kind of silly, you know? It could be. It happened; they saw what we did and what it meant and it was like, ‘Oh! The War Dogs rule.’ We came over here and then we weren’t the War Dogs. We were The Dogs and the same thing happened which is like, ‘Dogs? That’s stupid.’ But by the end of it, people are like, ‘Why are they The Last Outfit? They should be the Dog Bang Gang’ or something. That’s not what it’s about. So The Last Outfit as a concept, though… the way that Jay (White) speaks, right? Just the ‘Slickest Guns in the West’ and ‘We’re Collision cowboys, the dirty dogs, all that stuff. But The Last Outfit (is a) collective of people coming together for one cause. ‘Last’ is an illusion to BULLET CLUB. So, that’s kind of where that started but The Cut is the name we end up going with because I think it rolls off the tongue well, but we are The Last Outfit; we are The Cut.”

Connors also gave his thoughts about his former fellow War Dogs member Drilla Moloney would be a good fit to join The Cut in AEW when he moves over from New Japan Pro Wrestling.

“If we’re looking specifically at The Cut, I know my boy Drilla Moloney. We left him back there in Japan because he wanted to keep making a name for himself but, you know, I think he did. I think he made more of a name for himself but it’s time for him to go to greener pastures over here where we could really use him in a very efficient and a way that everyone could see how great he is. Another one would be El Phantasmo, ELP. He’s a former BULLET CLUB guy as well and he’s cool with Jay (White); he’s cool with me and Fin and everybody so… I would love to have him around.”

Connors also gave his thoughts about his belief that the War Dogs group were able to get out of Bullet Club’s shadow and establish themselves in NJPW.

“The War Dogs were BULLET CLUB only in name. We’ve said that before and we’ll continue to say that because it was one of those things that they wanted us to do. They wanted us to keep BULLET CLUB around because it sells a lot of merch but you know what also sells a lot of merch? The War Dogs, and by the end of that whole thing, people forgot about BULLET CLUB. We were the number one merch sellers for a long time out there in Japan, just being the War Dogs. So, coming over here… we made our names for ourselves over there so we wanted to spread the gospel here so, I think we did a pretty good job to start out if you looked at how we’ve been doing so far this year, so, we’re gonna keep it going.”

Connors also gave his thoughts about NJPW shutting down their NJPW of America subsidiary and NJPW Academy and his past connection to both as one of the original graduates of the LA Dojo.

“You could say that I kind of was the STRONG brand for a while. Me and Gabe (Kidd) and Karl (Fredericks) and Alex (Coughlin). That’s kind of where the whole thing came about, you know, and Kevin Knight as well. In terms of the actual business portion of it, it’s one of those things where Japan, New Japan as a whole, I think it’s a smart business decision on their part. They understand where their bread is buttered, and if it wasn’t for the pandemic, in my opinion, they would be so much stronger over here. I think that really kind of shut the whole thing. They were already kind of overseas. They kind of were ahead of schedule from where their original business plan was. They opened up that dojo, in terms of getting us in there and training us, a year or two ahead of schedule basically because of how good I did in my tryout.. I think it had a great run. Just like anything in wrestling, it’s cyclical so, when New Japan gets its feet under itself again back in Japan, I can easily see them opening back up over here so, never say never.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1, 2, 3, & 4