History Wrestling / JayWhite

* KnifeNut: His vignettes and screen videos show him repeatedly stabbing and slicing through objects like papers on the wall, mysterious books, and red ropes assembled in the style of infrared security lasers, with a trusty [[ShapedLikeItself switchblade]]. He even has a switchblade pendant around his neck. Chuckie T would nickname him "Knife Pervert" because of this during his brief time in CHAOS.

* BigBadEnsemble: Despite officially being THE BigBad, he allowed Bullet Club to operate as this for several years. During White's tenure as leader comprising BC's Cutthroat and REAL eras, BCOG Firing Squad pillars Bad Luck Fale and Tama Tonga acted as The Club's coordinators, while the legendary KENTA and House of Torture sub-boss EVIL all went after NJPW's top championships. This was consistent with Jay's pro-competition ideology, so Jay was okay with having multiple cooks in the kitchen, as he still felt that he was the best of them all...until he got tired of being needled with questions and comments from other BC members undermining his post, especially EVIL and Tama. By the time February 2022 came around, King Switch finally decided to make moves to truly impart his own vision on The Club; taking out Tama, his brother, and Jado to bring back The Good Brothers, reconciling his differences with one of his dojo-mates to bring Juice Robinson into the fold, and even making appearances in AEW to forge an alliance with former BC Elite member Adam Cole, all while diminishing the standing of House of Torture.

* BigBadDuumvirate:
** With Bullet Club OG, he effectively forms a three-headed monster with Bad Luck Fale and Tama Tonga, all three being masterminds in some form or another regarding the actions that brought them together in 2018. While he is being positioned as the clear ace of the group, Tama and Fale are the ones heavily coordinating their moves, similar to the relationship between AJ Styles and Karl Anderson before The Elite pulled their coup in 2016. He was later solidified as a more definitive BigBad when Tama officially announced him as the fifth leader of Bullet Club, though with Tama clarifying that the "leader" is more of a frontman targeting the company's top prize on behalf of the Club rather than an absolute commander who tells everyone what to do, the Tongans still very much hold an important degree of power.
** One could also say he had this with KENTA, who Jay seemed to have forged a sort of friendship with as the two worked together towards championship ambitions. White even backed KENTA without issue as the last challenger to the IWGP Heavyweight and Intercontinental Championships before the UsefulNotes/Covid19Pandemic-enforced lockdowns. Furthermore, following said COVID quarantine, Bullet Club suddenly acquired a much bigger Japanese contingent when they poached EVIL from Wrestling/LosIngobernablesDeJapon, brought in Dick Togo as his manager, and later took SHO from CHAOS. EVIL would become the leader of House of Torture, a sub-unit within BC, as well as a one-time IWGP Heavyeright/Intercontinental dual champion.
** Per his pro-competition ideology, Jay was okay with having multiple cooks in the kitchen like this, as he still felt that he was the best of them all. At least, when he wasn't getting needled with comments undermining his leadership. By the time February 2022 came around, King Switch finally got tired of being needled and questioned and decided to make moves to truly impart his own vision on The Club; taking out Tama, his brother, and Jado to bring back The Good Brothers, reconciling his differences with one of his dojo-mates to bring Juice Robinson into the fold, and even making appearances in AEW to forge an alliance with former BC Elite member Adam Cole, all while diminishing the standing of House of Torture.

* BigBadDuumvirate: With Bullet Club OG, he effectively forms a three-headed monster with Bad Luck Fale and Tama Tonga, all three being masterminds in some form or another regarding the actions that brought them together in 2018. While he is being positioned as the clear ace of the group, Tama and Fale are the ones heavily coordinating their moves, similar to the relationship between AJ Styles and Karl Anderson before The Elite pulled their coup in 2016. He was later solidified as a more definitive BigBad when Tama officially announced him as the fifth leader of Bullet Club, though with Tama clarifying that the "leader" is more of a frontman targeting the company's top prize on behalf of the Club rather than an absolute commander who tells everyone what to do, the Tongans still very much hold an important degree of power.

* RedBaron: Switchblade, Weapon of Choice, Knife Pervert.

** Despite all that he's done, his response to the UsefulNotes/Covid19Pandemic saw him make very few appearances in Japan and extend operations in America much more than even the other Bullet Club ''gaijin'', causing many people in The Club to start underestimating how much vision he truly had for the group. By the end of 2021, day-one pillar Tama Tonga, substitute leader EVIL, and junior heavyweight pillar El Phantasmo had all cast aspersions on The Switchblade's leadership, to which White offered vague threats of making a few changes. Come 2022, he would excommunicate Tama's Wrestling/GuerrillasOfDestiny sub-unit (meaning both his tag team with Tanga Loa and their manager Jado), while EVIL's House of Torture was deliberately ignored at The Club's nine-year anniversary when White brought Juice Robinson, Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows with him to all make shocking returns to Japan and take aim at NJPW championships.

* UnderestimatingBadassery: Has deliberately invoked this trope in his rise to the top. He started calling himself Switchblade, dressing like a shadow [[VideoGame/DevilMayCry Dante]], and speaking of grandiose agendas, well aware that the likes of Okada, Omega, and Tanahashi didn't take this nearly as seriously from an unproven upstart as they would from each other. He's gotten major victories over all three men, snatched a championship from Omega's inaugural run, and planted serious question marks into the future of Okada's group. Despite this, he was the one who fell prey to this trope when it came to Juice Robinson, who ended up beating him for the same title despite an injured left hand at the 2018 ''G1 Special in San Francisco''.

%%* YouGetMeCoffee: Even Jay White had to do this when he was a Young Lion.

** Former good friends David Finlay and Juice Robinson, who graduated in the same class from the NJPW Dojo, now both hate his guts. Aside from Jay being [[AlwaysSomeoneBetter 10-1 against David]] in singles competition dating back to their Young Boy days, Jay never said a thing to either man about becoming Switchblade or joining CHAOS, then proceeded to completely brush them off even after the fact. When Juice beat him for the United States Championship in San Francisco in 2018, the loss sent him into a rage in the post-match interview.

* YouGetMeCoffee: Even Jay White had to do this when he was a Young Lion.
* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: Literally has dark blue highlights towards the ends of his hair.

* UrExample: Initially after winning the NEVER Openweight Championship he called himself the first New Japan "Quadruple Crown" Champion, but this was quickly overtaken as the official designation by the more popular term of GrandSlamChampion.

* UrExample: The first New Japan Grand Slam champion.

[[quoteright:330:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jaywhitenz_beyondgorilla.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:330:Breathing in the Cutthroat Era…]]

Consistently hovering near or within the NJPW main event picture even after losing the championship in April 2019, he became the IWGP Intercontinental Champion later that year, as well as the first person to successfully take the Wrestle Kingdom Contract briefcase away from the winner of the G1 Climax in 2020, both victories which played him into the IWGP Heavyweight/Intercontinental double gold sweepstakes of Wrestle Kingdoms 14 and 15. Despite coming up short both times to the very men that he beat heading in, Wrestling/TetsuyaNaito and Wrestling/KotaIbushi respectively, White recovered after a brief sabbatical to defeat Tanahashi again, becoming the first IWGP [[Wrestling/GrandSlamChampion Quadruple Crown Champion]] by virtue of his NEVER Openweight Championship victory in May 2021. And yes, this is STILL ''his era''. It's the REAL Era.

Consistently hovering near or within the NJPW main event picture even after losing the championship in April 2019, he became the IWGP Intercontinental Champion later that year, as well as the first person to successfully take the Wrestle Kingdom Contract briefcase away from the winner of the G1 Climax in 2020, both victories which played him into the IWGP Heavyweight/Intercontinental double gold sweepstakes of Wrestle Kingdoms 14 and 15. Despite coming up short both times to the very men that he beat heading in, Wrestling/TetsuyaNaito and Wrestling/KotaIbushi respectively, White recovered after a brief sabbatical to defeat Tanahashi again, becoming the first IWGP [[GrandSlamChampion Quadruple Crown Champion]] by virtue of his NEVER Openweight Championship victory in May 2021. And yes, this is STILL ''his era''. It's the REAL Era.

Finally, in late 2017, NJPW saw vignettes aired for a mysterious dark character called "Switchblade". This turned out to be the returning Jay White, with "Switchblade" as his new motif and nickname in a deliberately DarkerAndEdgier persona. Instantly marking his intention to make NJPW "his kingdom", he first challenged Wrestling/HiroshiTanahashi for the IWGP Intercontinental Championship at Wrestle Kingdom 12 in 2018, coming up short. However, this only reinvigorated his drive, which Wrestling/KennyOmega, and the rest of NJPW, found out the hard way, starting when Omega attempted to invite White to join Bullet Club only to be introduced to a downward spiral which saw White capture Omega's IWGP United States Championship, later overtake Omega's position in Bullet Club as part of a long-running scheme, and finally take the IWGP Heavyweight Championship from Tanahashi, making White the fourth youngest IWGP Heavyweight Champion of all time.

Jay White (born 9 October 1992) is a New Zealand {{professional wrestl|ing}}er, currently signed to Wrestling/NewJapanProWrestling (NJPW), with occasional appearances with Wrestling/RingOfHonor (ROH) and Revolution Pro Wrestling ([=RevPro=]/RPW).

** The three above all played out to their logical conclusion in October 2018, with White defecting from CHAOS to join Bullet Club OG with an attack having laid out both Okada and Tanahashi at ''King of Pro Wrestling'', as well as calling out BC Elite for being "ripoff shit", all the while taking Gedo and Jado with him.

** Since joining the Bullet Club, he's taken to declaring things he's part of "RRREEEEEEEEEEAL" and making a gun gesture to the camera, a deliberate CallBack to the group's original leader, Prince Devitt.

* FromNobodyToNightmare: He started with NJPW as part of its "[[NewMeat young boy/young lion]]" initiative, which means his first year or so with the company saw him [[YouGetMeCoffee doing errands for the established talent]] while occasionally serving as a generic black-trunked {{jobber}}. Such an earnest young man was he that when he was sent on excursion, The Motor City Machine Guns made him part of their uprising {{face}} project Search & Destroy. Then he came back to NJPW as the deliberately edgy and ambitious Switchblade, who within 15 months went from a try-hard kid in over his head to a devastating mastermind who managed to conquer New Japan wholesale while replacing a man known as "[[Wrestling/KennyOmega The Best Bout Machine]]" as the leader of Wrestling/BulletClub. Then again, given that his inroad to NJPW started when he impressed [[Wrestling/FergalDevitt Prince Devitt]] in a UK tag match and Devitt proceeded to get him in touch with Bad Luck Fale all just months before Devitt left the company, it was clear that [[InvokedTrope Devitt had him pegged for this level of success and made sure he factored into Bullet Club's agenda before most people even knew who he was]].

** He and Gedo betrayed CHAOS to join Wrestling/BulletClub, including Bad Luck Fale, the Wrestling/GuerrillasOfDestiny, and Taiji Ishimori, among others.

* TheDogBitesBack: When Jay was a Young Lion, the Bullet Club (specifically Bullet Club Elite) harassed and tormented him at every turn. Now that he's returned as Switchblade, he instantly set about to getting his payback by destroying The Elite and taking the power of Bullet Club back to the base established by his mentors.

* TheDogBitesBack: When Jay was a Young Lion, the Bullet Club (specifically Bullet Club Elite) harassed and tormented him at every turn. Now that he's returned as Switchblade, he intends to get his payback by destroying them.

* DarkerAndEdgier: His mannerisms and fashion sense had largely developed into their own during his time as the youthful and exuberant Weapon of Choice, but only gained more of a determined, threatening edge with his turn into the Switchblade.

* ForeignCussWord: Jay, like the rest of the Bullet Club [[SirSwearsALot swears like a sailor]], but because it's all in English, the TV executives pay it no mind. Doubles as GettingCrapPastTheRadar.

* BigBad: His ascension to the biggest heel in New Japan was cemented at the end of 2018 when Tama Tonga, fresh off BCOG successfully separating Bullet Club from The Elite, officially naming Jay the leader of Bullet Club, four years after Fale and Devitt had brought him into the company.

** While he and Wrestling/KazuchikaOkada are stablemates at the moment in CHAOS, White made it very clear from the start he intended to come after Okada when the time came. Since beating the Rainmaker in the first main event of the 28th G1 Climax, White has become more open about his intentions to reshape CHAOS, even claiming that the stable, including Okada himself, belongs to him now.

* Main/ForeignCussWord: Jay, like the rest of the Bullet Club swears like a sailor, but because it's all in English, the TV executives pay it no mind. Doubles as GettingCrapPastTheRadar.

* BigBad: With their OG faction successfully separating Bullet Club from The Elite, Tama Tonga would officially name Jay White, the man who Bad Luck Fale and Prince Devitt had brought into the company four years prior, as the new leader of Bullet Club at the end of 2018.