Wrestling / Jay White

Breathe with The Switchblade

*metal clank*

Jamie "Jay" White (born 9 October 1992) is a New Zealand professional wrestler, currently signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW). Before signing full-time with AEW in 2023, he had a long and successful run in New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) with occasional appearances on Ring of Honor (ROH), Revolution Pro Wrestling (RevPro/RPW) and AEW.

White first traveled to England to start his training to become a professional wrestler, coming under the tutelage of The UK Kid and making his debut for Kid's promotion Varsity Pro Wrestling in February 2013. He would make his way through the British independent circuit for companies such as VPW and All Star Wrestling, before a tag team match in 2014 saw him paired up with Prince Devitt, who was so impressed with him that he put in a word for him with New Japan Pro-Wrestling, beginning a turn of events where Devitt, Bad Luck Fale, and Shinsuke Nakamura would all facilitate White being brought into the NJPW dojo as a young boy.

Going through the dojo starting in 2015, he spent a year and a half there before the company sent him out on foreign excursions, where he began becoming a regular rising star with ROH and RevPro. During this time he became best known as one of the prospects that Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin were actively helping bring forward through the business, eventually joining them in a collective known as Search & Destroy which frequently butted heads with the ROH members of Bullet Club.

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 Darker and Edgier persona. Instantly marking his intention to make NJPW "his kingdom", he first challenged Hiroshi Tanahashi for the IWGP Intercontinental Championship at Wrestle Kingdom 12 in 2018, coming up short. However, this only reinvigorated his drive, which Kenny Omega, 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, ushering in his new era of Bullet Club.

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, Tetsuya Naito and Kota Ibushi respectively, White recovered after a brief sabbatical to defeat Tanahashi again, becoming the first NJPW Quadruple Crown Champion by virtue of his NEVER Openweight Championship victory in May 2021. And yes, this is STILL his era. Don't believe him? Ask Okada, who Jay beat AGAIN in June 2022 to become IWGP World Heavyweight Champion. However, with his contract with NJPW nearing its end in early 2023, he did business on the way out. First, he dropped the IWGP world title to Okada at Wrestle Kingdom 17 on January 4. He then lost a "Loser Leaves Japan" match against Hikuleo at The New Beginning in Osaka on February 11, followed by a loss to Eddie Kingston in a "Loser Leaves NJPW" match at Battle in the Valley on February 18 in San Jose, California.

On April 5, 2023, Jay officially signed with AEW, having formed the faction "Bullet Club Gold" alongside Juice Robinson. The two would later recruit former AEW Tag Team Champions, Austin and Colten Gunn. On January 17, 2024, Jay and The Gunns defeated The Mogul Embassy to become the Ring of Honor World Six-Man Tag Team Champions.

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"Trope with the Switchblade!":

• All Part of the Show: One of Jay's biggest hidden talents as a performer is his ability to play off accidents and work them into the story of whatever was supposed to be happening with an ease and aptitude that most guys don't have at his age. For a shining example, look at what happened at the G1 Special in San Francisco, where he threw Juice Robinson at the barricade and accidentally knocked over Jim Ross. Instead of panicking, Jay immediately started exploiting it and the commentators' reactions for heel heat like it was all a planned spot, and as a result, he turned what could have been a match-derailing botch into a well-timed Kick the Dog moment that set up the final stretch and Juice's victory perfectly.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Bullet Club seem to have been this for awhile, from the Young Bucks and company being the first people to give him a hard time on his excursion to his expert manipulation of Kenny Omega and mutual hatred with Hangman Page upon his return. Strangely notable is that this seems to be exclusive to The Elite contingent, as he has never spoken disrespectfully of the Tongans, and Tama Tonga and Bad Luck Fale have even both expressed interest in having him join them. Might have to do with Fale being partly responsible for him getting into Japan, which he has noted.
  • Being the all-beloved heroic ace of the rebirth of New Japan especially in the post-Antonio Inoki era, Hiroshi Tanahashi is the man he first sought to dethrone and the man who he styled himself pretty much as a direct opposite of from the very beginning of his return from excursion.
  • When he joined with Kazuchika Okada as a part of 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. Jay's entrance can also be considered a corrupted form of Okada's as Jay's has the sound of a switchblade hitting the ground, similar to Okada's coin drop, which reference how Jay is an Evil Counterpart to Okada.
  • 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 Jadō & Gedō with him.
  • 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 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. He and Juice would reconcile in 2022 as a struggling Robinson would join the White-captained Bullet Club, but this has no doubt made for hotter animosity with Finlay.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Especially as part of the Bullet Club.
• Batman Gambit: Post-Wrestle Kingdom 12, Switchblade has quickly established this as his modus operandi. He knew that the main-eventers like Okada and Omega didn't take him all that seriously, thanks to his relatively unproven status, so he took advantage of their egos to worm his way into Okada's faction and detonate the building tensions within Bullet Club by beating Omega for the IWGP U.S. title. He often favors the perspective that his victories over high-caliber opponents (especially major stars like Omega) prove his skill level to be above where his opponent thinks he is moreso than above where his opponent is.
• Beard of Evil: Has been growing one since mid-2019.
• Big Bad: 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 named Jay the leader of Bullet Club, four years after Fale and Devitt had brought him into the company.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Played straight and later averted. Despite officially being THE Big Bad, 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.
• Cassandra Truth: Played with. One of his seeming pet peeves and advantages at the same time is how often people didn't take him seriously when he said he was gonna do something. He would not hesitate to throw it in his victims' face whenever he completed a promise. It took him taking the IWGP US Championship from Omega, coming after Okada when the time was right, destroying Omega's version of the Bullet Club, and ultimately beating Okada at Wrestle Kingdom 13 for the entire company to take notice and see that the Switchblade is in fact deadly serious about everything he says. Finally averted when he challenged Tanahashi for the IWGP Heavyweight Title the very next month; by that point it was stated by commentators that him becoming the new champion felt inevitable.
• Catchphrase:
  • Ends his promos by telling whoever he's addressing, "You will breathe with the Switchblade", sometimes adding in "Still my era".
  • 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 Call-Back to the group's original leader, Prince Devitt. His second chapter as the group's frontman is even called the Real Era.
  • After debuting in AEW, he starts using "Guns up" while making Finger Gun gestures with Bullet Club Gold.
• Cluster F-Bomb: On the backstage segment of the G1 Climax 32 day 18 after Jay White lost to Tama Tonga after beating everyone else in his block, Jay White eventually devolves into this screaming FUCK 9 times in a row
• Companion Cube: On the July 29th 2023 episode of Collision, Juice brought in a cardboard cutout of Jay White to the arena due to Jay being absent for that episode. The following episode however, even when Jay returned, Juice continued to bring around the cardboard cutout and named it "Cardblade", with the faction treating it as if it's a fully fledged member of Bullet Club Gold.
• Darker and Edgier: 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. And of course, he brought the Bullet Club back to its villainous origins from the Lighter and Softer vision that was The Elite Era.
• Delinquent Hair: Had a mohawk as a Young Lion, and by the time he came back as Switchblade, he grew out the hair on the sides while letting the mohawk grow long enough to create a fringe.
• Devil in Plain Sight:
  • Made his intentions perfectly clear from the very beginning of his return from excursion; he wants to become the man in NJPW. He also despises the way NJPW's stables encourage complacency in their members. This is why he rejected Kenny Omega's offer to join Bullet Club, and why his first day as a member of CHAOS had him instantly warn Kazuchika Okada that they will be crossing paths as enemies when the time fits, IWGP title or not.
  • He ended up making good on his promise at the very start of the 2018 G1 Climax tour, where the first main event of a G1 tour show was him vs. Okada and he proceeded to cheat viciously in order to beat Okada and then declared himself the new leader of CHAOS, even going so far as to call Okada "[his] Rainmaker" now. As the tour went on and he competed in tag team matches alongside other CHAOS members in between his actual block matches, he did nothing almost every time his partners were pinned or in a submission, preferring to let them fail to prove his point that his ways were better.
  • Hiroshi Tanahashi. Bullet Club's Elite contingent. His own CHAOS teammates. Tanahashi's friends. Even Suzuki-gun during the G1 Climax. He antagonized all of them through the first nine months of 2018. The only NJPW wrestlers he didn't speak any disrespect towards in that time? The Tongan members of Bullet Club. Going even further is the night Kenny Omega tried to induct him into Bullet Club before he even joined CHAOS (see Foreshadowing below).
  • Bad Luck Fale once stated in an interview that his advice to Jay White regarding Bullet Club leadership was to not call himself the leader, but simply be the leader, similar to Prince Devitt and AJ Styles as opposed to Kenny Omega and The Elite. Jay followed this for the first three years of his run at the front of BC, before starting to proclaim his leadership during an Impact Wrestling tour where he was joined by The Guerrillas of Destiny, months after Tama Tonga had started questioning him. Before very long, it was clear that Jay was ready to trade some people in and out and start reconstructing The Club in his own image, with Tama being the first victim of this.
• The Dog Bites Back: 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 earliest mentors.
• Eviler than Thou: While previous Bullet Club leaders are heels as well, Styles and Omega are at least popular among the fans due to their engaging or colorful personality, making them Affably Evil at times. White on the other hand gets heat from the fans like a true heel, much like Devitt in the beginning but at a World Heavyweight threat level, and is often considered a supervillain or a Final Boss. To wit, Jay is the longest running Bullet Club leader, as well as the one whose leadership can be split into three distinct fully-dedicated "eras" as it were:
  1. The Cutthroat Era, wherein Jay first established himself at the front with the backing of the Tongans and let the world know he was every bit as good as he claimed.
  2. The REAL Era, wherein he sought to refine his identity following the COVID-19 Pandemic lockdown while simultaneously seeing multiple emergent leaders potentially challenge him.
  3. The Get Paid/Switchblade Era, where he finally pushed his own vision for the group forward while excising and minimizing all internal threats after having had his fill of being questioned for his whereabouts.
• Evil Virtues: Despite being very much a despicable manipulative jerk, Jay White does have his sense of virtues. Namely, a very roundabout form of honesty contained in his schemes. Examples below:
  • He put on the Bullet Club shirt and did the Too Sweet before attacking Kenny Omega at New Year Dash 2018, then stated at the press conference the following day that he was joining CHAOS as a means to an end to help him destroy the Bullet Club that seemingly worshiped Omega. Further interviews and statements indicated that his entire beef with the Bullet Club was focused squarely on the Elite faction, and he actually had some sly respect for the "BCOG" members, specifically Bad Luck Fale and Tama Tonga. By the end of the year, Omega's entire Elite contingent which had taken over Bullet Club was now excised from the stable and seemingly on their way out of NJPW altogether, and he would step in as the new proper leader of Bullet Club with the support of Fale and Tama.
  • He warned Okada that he would not fall in line as another one of Okada's boys, that his joining CHAOS was to help himself, and that he would in fact come after Okada when the time was right. Not only did he in fact come after Okada, he stole CHAOS's legendary managers and his influence may have caused a darkening turn in a few of its main wrestlers, given Chuckie T's madness, Will Ospreay's more vicious and grounded offense, and Tomohiro Ishii's refusal to play nice with NJPW's home team members. And as far as the time being right? He beat Okada in a clean finish at Wrestle Kingdom 13.
  • When Jay White and the Guerrillas of Destiny toured Impact together in early 2022, Jay started declaring how he was the leader of Bullet Club during promos. One of said Guerrillas was Tama Tonga, who had started questioning Jay's place on the throne due to his absence in Japan following the onset of the COVID pandemic and especially his loss to Kota Ibushi at Wrestle Kingdom 15. Sure enough, the first step in implementing the reconstruction of Bullet Club which Jay had been planning all this time was to remove Tama Tonga and all who stood with him for being obstacles to that plan, with Karl Anderson retaking his place as the "heart and soul" elder statesman of the group.
• Face–Heel Turn: Suddenly, the shining young upstart who came up through the dojo, who was best friends with David Finlay Jr., who the Motor City Machine Guns saw as having potential to carry their vision of great exciting wrestling into the future, was gone, replaced by a gothic madman with dreams of taking over NJPW.
• Fanboy: Invoked and ultimately denied towards Tomohiro Ishii. Unlike the rest of CHAOS, who he often denigrated and tried to manipulate into fulfilling his own personal agenda, Jay displayed tremendous respect for the unshakable and always forward-charging badass that is Ishii. He was practically cheerleading when Ishii came right at Kenny Omega and declared his intentions to make good on the IWGP Heavyweight Championship shot that he earned by being the first man to beat Kenny in the 28th G1, even stating that Ishii was the example he was trying to get the others to be like. But then he convinced Gedo and Jado to join him in betraying the entire stable, Ishii included, to take part in the rebuilding of the villainous Bullet Club, and later referred to the Stone Pitbull as an "old fuck" after winning the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, confirming that his respect toward Ishii was put on for show.
• Finishing Move: Alex Shelley's Shellshock, now called Blade Runner.
• Flanderization: Most of Bullet Club have identical Foreign Wrestling Heel gimmicks in Japan only differentiated by moves and mannerisms, when in American promotions anyone confusing Switchblade for AJ Styles, The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, Karl Anderson and or Doc Gallows probably wasn't paying attention.
• Foreshadowing: At New Year Dash 2018, Kenny Omega tried to invite The Switchblade into Bullet Club by presenting him with a BC shirt. He put on the shirt, he did the Too Sweet (before Omega convinced him to put it down and hug him instead), and he hit the Blade Runner on Omega as well as escaped Chase Owens and Yujiro Takahashi's attempted run-in all while wearing the shirt, before finally taking it off and doing a throat-slash gesture clearly aimed at Kenny and his supporters. Immediately in the aftermath, Jay actually advertised his own "Switch Blade" version of a Bullet Club T-shirt on Pro Wrestling Tees, before suddenly discontinuing it shortly after he joined CHAOS; however, with CHAOS being a face-leaning tweener group while Jay was a treacherous heel, Jay making it clear he wasn't there to serve Okada but himself, and the Bullet Club OGs making fun of how "the wrong guy tried to recruit him", the symbolism of a possible future presented by his brief relationship with BC shirts continued to rent space in fans' heads.
• Foreign Cuss Word: 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.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: None of CHAOS were ever his true friends. They were either shocked and appalled at his success, confused at trying to figure him out, or paid him no mind whatsoever until it was time to work with him. Given the surrounding tropes, this is no surprise at all. This was in fact justified by his treachery in fall 2018; he was obviously far more comfortable around Gedo following the latter's betrayal of Okada for him, as well as Jado and the members of Bullet Club OG following his and Gedo and Jado's complete defection to that group, than he ever was during any part of his time around the other members of CHAOS.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He started with NJPW as part of its "young boy/young lion" initiative, which means his first year or so with the company saw him 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 "The Best Bout Machine" as the leader of Bullet Club. Then again, given that his inroad to NJPW started when he impressed 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 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.
• Genre Savvy: In regards to kayfabe, he understands completely that the goal of a professional wrestling match is to win. He pointedly does not care about "putting on a great performance for the fans" and often chastises his babyface opponents for doing so, stating that they're wearing out their energy, focusing on the wrong aspect of the sport by doing so, and in the process making things easier for him. He even states that his match with Okada being the shortest legitimately competitive Wrestle Kingdom match Okada's had since returning from excursion in 2012^* as one can argue Okada and Yoshi-Hashi's lackluster re-debut against each other at Wrestle Kingdom VI was part of a trap set for Tanahashi was actually a good thing because (A) it means it took him far less time to beat Okada than it took Okada to beat Naito, Omega, Tanahashi, etc., and (B) he was that much more fresh than the already-aged Tanahashi^* who had gone through hell defeating Omega for the title in the main event at the Tokyo Dome heading into their tag match the following night, enabling him to win, make his challenge for Tanahashi's title, and then assault Tanahashi easily in the aftermath.
• Hate Sink: Since his return from excursion and adopting the Switchblade gimmick, Jay has become one of NJPW's most despised heels. During his match with Juice Robinson for the U.S. title at the 2018 G1 Special in San Francisco, Jay repeatedly stepped on Juice's broken hand prompting a loud "FUCK YOU SWITCHBLADE!" chant from the crowd. He would top this by cheating his way to victory over Okada and Tanahashi in the 28th G1 Climax, loudly boasting that he was now the leader of CHAOS and NJPW's Ace respectively and earning loud boos from the crowd. It got to the point that when he faced Minoru Suzuki, who is the last person in NJPW's roster that could be classified as a babyface, the crowd was firmly on Suzuki's side.
• Hero Killer: His second major event singles match since returning to NJPW saw him beat Kenny Omega for the IWGP U.S. Heavyweight title, followed up by victories over both Kazuchika Okada and Hiroshi Tanahashi at the G1 Climax albeit thanks to cheating tactics. Then at Wrestle Kingdom 13, he topped that by beating Okada again, this time completely clean. And then he topped that by defeating Tanahashi yet again at New Beginning in Osaka 2019 to become the IWGP Heavyweight Champion. To summarize, in less than a year since his debut, Jay has held victories over three of NJPW's top stars on his way to capturing NJPW’s top belt. Even more impressive would be the significance of all of those victories:
  • The Omega victory was the lynchpin that kicked off the Bullet Club Civil War which saw Bullet Club's Elite faction divide themselves to the point they were clearly no longer fit for the overall ethos of Bullet Club as a stable. This ultimately empowered Tama Tonga, Bad Luck Fale, and the other core/"OG" members of Bullet Club to eject The Elite, paving the way for Jay White to take the helm and become BC's leader and for The Elite, including Omega, to eventually leave NJPW.
  • The Tanahashi and Okada victories at the G1 Climax enabled White to compete for the Wrestle Kingdom Contract even after coming up short in the tournament itself, as well as spurred Gedo, Jado, and another member to be revealed to ultimately join White in betraying Chaos and ushering in the "CutThroat Era" of the Bullet Club.
  • White's actions in his defection to Bullet Club caused CHAOS and the main NJPW unit to actually start getting along in friendly combinations, not the least of which being Okada and Tanahashi teaming up for the first time ever in a series of tag matches against White and his new cohorts. Bullet Club would go on to win every single time, thus cutting down the entire idea of Okada and Tanahashi as a "Dream Team". Despite having taken on a more or less freewheeling, "no-pressure" persona after losing the IWGP Heavyweight Championship to Omega, Okada was clearly becoming more and more frustrated with his "former teammate".
  • And despite Okada completely ditching the stress-free balloon-popping persona and returning to his classic standard Rainmaker form, the Okada victory at Wrestle Kingdom still happened, again, completely clean^* yes, Gedo interfered in the match, but Okada took him out of the equation with a simultaneous attack on both him and White, leaving the finish strictly up to the two competitors in the match. With this and yet another tag team victory over the Ace and Rainmaker at New Year Dash, he cemented himself as the absolute top contender for Tanahashi's newly-won IWGP Heavyweight title. All in the span of a single year.
  • Only a month later, he won the title from Tanahashi in his first challenge with another entirely clean finish, cementing his new era over all of pro wrestling and completely validating both Gedo's decision to abandon Okada in favor of becoming White's new manager, and Bullet Club's decision to oust The Elite and anoint him as the true successor to Prince Devitt and AJ Styles.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He is criticised in some corners for not working five-star thirty minute-plus epics. As he points out, if he can beat Kazuchika Okada and Hiroshi Tanahashi in under ten minutes, when the supposedly greatest wrestler in the world needed over an hour, that just proves how much better he is. In fact, his entire character applies this as a meta-heeling concept; he is capable of wrestling lengthy epics as proven by his work with Kota Ibushi, Tetsuya Naito, Will Ospreay, and Hirooki Goto, but his psychology is of a man less concerned with that than with taking advantage of the inherent openings presented by his crowd-pleasing foes in order to win at all costs.
• Loser Leaves Town: As noted above, he lost a "Loser Leaves Japan" match to Hikuleo and a "Loser Leaves NJPW" match to Eddie Kingston in February 2023.
• Manipulative Bastard: One of his goals of ambition seems to involve either collapsing or transforming the stables in the company's Mob War. Aside from detonating the powder-keg of Bullet Club, he occasionally tried to pit CHAOS members in internal competition against each other when he was with them and even lauded his former best friend David Finlay for coming after him without Juice Robinson in tow, hinting that even Taguchi Japan isn't safe. On the other hand, he seems to dislike fighting his stablemates in matches where there's nothing on the line, if his reaction to being in an all-CHAOS tag match during the 2018 G1 tour is anything to go by.
• Mob War: After becoming leader, Switchblade has led Bullet Club in their war with Chaos and Los Ingobernables de Japon.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: His Red Baron is "The Switchblade". Switchblade knives are considered to be so dangerous they're illegal in many places including Jay's native New Zealand. Meaning he's literally branded himself an outlaw who likes to play with knives.
• No Shirt, Long Jacket: Started wearing leather jackets without shirts during his year on excursion, they became long enough to properly fit the trope when he came back as Switchblade.
• Playing with Fire: His Wrestle Kingdom entrances have all included lots of torches and/or flamethrowers on the stage to signal his arrival.
• Power Stable:
  • Search & Destroy in ROH, with notable members including The Motor City Machine Guns, Jonathan Gresham, and Lio Rush.
  • CHAOS initially in NJPW, with Kazuchika Okada, Tomohiro Ishii, Will Ospreay, and Toru Yano being its most important members.
  • He and Gedo betrayed CHAOS to join Bullet Club, including Bad Luck Fale, the Guerrillas of Destiny, Kenta Kobayashi and Taiji Ishimori, among others.
  • Bullet Club Gold in AEW, alongside Juice Robinson and The Gunns.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Issued an absolutely blistering one towards Hangman Page at the Strong Style Evolved press conference, calling out the ridiculous overblown drama going on with Hangman and Bullet Club and turning Page's WWE-esque questionable Worked Shoot about White's schedule as US Champion right on its head using entirely kayfabe-relevant content.
• Red Baron: Switchblade, Weapon of Choice, Knife Pervert, The Last Rock-n-Rolla, The Catalyst of Professional Wrestling.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Juice Robinson is the loud, hyperactive Red Oni to Jay White's snarky, methodical Blue Oni.
• Rewatch Bonus: Going back through everything he said and did in his feuds with Kenny Omega and Adam Page, namely taking the US Championship from them and looking to expose and dismantle Bullet Club in its fragile state, turns out to be revealing in an entirely different context than initially thought in light of how the rest of 2018 went going forward into 2019.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • It's been discussed that White has almost deliberately styled himself as this to Tanahashi, becoming an "Anti-Ace" in a sense. While Switchblade and Tanahashi are both very showy and confident in their demeanor as well as fairly independent even when working in groups, Tanahashi is an All-Loving Hero and values the ideals of Japanese fighting spirit and truly fair and honorable competition which have defined NJPW. White, on the other hand, is treacherously ambitious, does not care for Japan's tropes of honor, hates wrestling fans, and fully intends to reshape the company into his image even down to how its factions operate and compete. To a lesser extent, much of this also applies to his relationship to Okada within the CHAOS stable.
  • Another interesting example is between White and Kenny Omega. Like The Cleaner before him, The Switchblade is a gothic-styled maniac with visions of grandeur for NJPW and pro-wrestling in general with himself as the center of the change, both brought into Bullet Club to fill a hole that was presented by the exodus of the previous leader. Aside from that, however, the two couldn't be more different. Omega is a blatantly flashy and hard-striking wrestler who seems to be more interested in using his wrestling to preach a message of progressive motion and thought, while White is a precise and calculating attacker whose every action is focused around doing what it takes to win. Also, where Omega and The Young Bucks would flamboyantly declare that their vision is grand and good while routinely engaging in morally questionable actions only to seemingly forget their own culpability when things come back to haunt them, White has no qualms about pronouncing his villainous ambitions and then motioning towards the best way to carry them through.
    • Ironically, from the Bullet Club perspective, this would make Omega the Shadow Archetype to White, just as he was to his predecessors Devitt and Styles. Omega's ideology and the inconsistent actions of his Elite introduced a dysfunctional element to BC that almost saw the whole group itself collapse in division, whereas White's complete unashamed villainy aligned far better to the core values of The Club as a violent brotherhood of men aiming for the top at all costs akin to The nWo and very quickly pushed The Club to reestablish its dominance. Given that Devitt and Fale were responsible for bringing White into NJPW in the first place while Omega was one of BC's first-year enemies before he became a member, this doesn't come off as surprising at all in hindsight.
• Sigil Spam: His primary logo, the five tallies in claw style as if carved into with a knife, is all over his gear and frequently shows up as a tron graphic. Many of his entrance jackets have an alternate, more clean and simplistic looking set of tallies as well.
• Sinister Switchblade: 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 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.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: His usual way of speaking before he heads into a fight.
• Suddenly Shouting: His usual way of speaking during and after fights.
• Take Up My Sword: During the important final matches of the 2019 G1 Climax in which he faced Tetsuya Naito and Kota Ibushi, he made use of Prince Devitt's Bloody Sunday/1916 finisher as a Signature Move.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: His relationship to CHAOS when he was a member, especially when it came to Okada, Roppongi 3K (Rocky Romero, Sho and Yoh), and Yoshi-Hashi. He made sure that they hated and distrusted him from the start. Makes it all the more impressive that he still pulled the fast one on them that he did.
• They Call Him "Sword": During his ROH excursion, he once had a T-shirt on Pro Wrestling Tees calling him the Weapon of Choice. Then he returned to NJPW and it was time to breathe with The Switchblade.
• Token Evil Teammate: Played this role to perfection within CHAOS, even becoming The Corrupter towards Gedo and Jado as he jumped ship to Bullet Club and took the legends with him.
• Underestimating Badassery:
  • Has deliberately invoked this trope in his rise to the top. He started calling himself Switchblade, dressing like a shadow 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. Still, it took him defeating Okada at Wrestle Kingdom and capturing the IWGP Heavyweight Title from Tanahashi before people started taking him seriously and he was able to refine his Switchblade persona, becoming more slick and confident than deliberately edgy.
  • Despite all that he's done, his response to the COVID-19 Pandemic 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 standout 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 Guerrillas of Destiny 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. Phantasmo received a shout-out, proving much more loyal, but it was still Taiji Ishimori who would represent BC as Junior Heavyweight Champion.
• Ur-Example: 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 Grand Slam Champion.
• Villain Has a Point: As much as a scumbag White is, he is right to call MJF a "slimy, gutless coward" and couldn't be trusted on October 4th, 2023 episode of Dynamite, and also calls the fans naive for believing that MJF was not the man who attacked him the week before. MJF only turned face not too long ago and that's mostly because of his of Popularity Power and his friendship with Adam Cole but he is still the same man he was when he is a heel.
• We Can Rule Together: Both Kenny Omega and Bad Luck Fale have offered this to Jay White in 2018. He rejected Omega's offer in January, and has said nothing to Fale's deal over the summer…before ultimately accepting in October.
• We Used to Be Friends: He and David Finlay were the closest of friends as young boys, but then he told Finlay nothing about becoming Switchblade or his plans to join CHAOS. And he, Gedo, and Jado definitely didn't say anything to anyone else in CHAOS about their plans to switch out on them for Bullet Club OG.
• You, Get Me Coffee: Even Jay White had to do this when he was a Young Lion. Fortunately for him, his sempai Bad Luck Fale later became his enforcer during his leadership of Bullet Club.

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...because it's STILL.MY.ERA