Fergal Devitt grew up in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland and was trained by Johnny Mess, the New Japan Inocki Dojo, and NWA UK Hammerlock (the first place he trained and debuted in 2000). Outside WWE, he is best known for his time spent with NJPW in Japan. There, he was a three-time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion and six-time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champion with two different partners, in addition to being a two-time winner of the Best of the Super Juniors tournament (2010 and 2013).
Prince Devitt is also a founding member of Bullet Club and the original leader. New Japan Pro-Wrestling had a working relationship with Mexican promotion CMLL, and through this Devitt wrestled in Mexico and became an NWA World Historic Middleweight Champion.
In addition, he wrestled under a myriad of different names for numerous independent promotions, and winning titles in multiple different promotions (primarily during his early career and in the UK). After signing with WWE right after New Japan in 2014, Devitt was given the new name Finn Balor so it would be unique to WWE instead of being recognized all throughout the world. Then he was let loose on WWE TV, beginning with his first NXT title victory in 2015.
He began his career by winning the NWA British Commonwealth Heavyweight Championship shortly after debuting for NWA UK Hammerlock. Immediately upon graduating, he began touring the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as the US. In 2002 (with partner Paul Tracey), Devitt started his own wrestling promotion called NWA Ireland where he ultimately trained future WWE superstar Becky Lynch. In 2005, he won the NWA British Commonwealth title for the second time and was invited to the New Japan Inocki Dojo in Santa Monica, California to train.
Devitt signed a contract with NJPW in early 2006 (this is where he got the name Prince Devitt). He claimed in an interview the reason his name was changed was because no Japanese person could pronounce his biological name. He was originally to be called King David until people started questioning why he would already be a king at age 24. It’s also worth noting that Japanese professional wrestling is taken much more seriously than anywhere else in the world and crowds are very respectful toward performers. They are also very committed to the notion that even professional wrestling gimmicks need to be believable, and to say the least this one wasn’t.
Devitt made his debut under a mask as the second Pegasus Kid (after the original Pegasus Kid Chris Benoit). He suffered his first major injury in Japan in January 2007 but returned several months later with major improvement and winning his first IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship with Minoru in January 2008. He slowly became acquainted with the company, and most notably holding the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship for 364 days from 2010 – 2011. In March 2012 Devitt made his first trip to Mexico as part of NJPW’s partnership with the Mexican promotion CMLL, becoming the NWA World Historic Middleweight Champion and held the title for 182 days.
Bullet Club’s inception took place on May 3, 2013. Shortly after this, Prince Devitt won his second Best of the Super Juniors tournament before immediately setting his sights on the next goal, which was to become the first wrestler to hold the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship and the IWGP Heavyweight Championship simultaneously. 2013 finished with Prince Devitt getting victories over Hiroshi Tanashi and Kazuchika Okada (in American terminology, think of Tanahashi as the John Cena of Japan and Okada as Roman Reigns).
Devitt lost the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship to Kota Ibushi on January 4 at Wrestle Kingdom 8 after 14 months, in full face and body paint which he continued using throughout the rest of his time in NJPW for big matches (this is where the idea came for WWE to create The Demon King persona). Ironically, Prince Devitt’s final night in NJPW in 2014 was AJ Styles’ first, and AJ would become the third leader of Bullet Club for the next couple years while Prince Devitt went across the world to WWE (AJ would join him in WWE two years later).
In WWE, Finn Balor (the name is derived from Irish mythology – the latter name is also Gaelic for “Demon King) made his official debut for the company in September 2014 and quickly won the NXT Championship within a year from Kevin Owens. That same year, he also won the first ever Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic with Samoa Joe in October 2015, and a rivalry for the title ultimately broke out between Joe and NXT Champion Balor lasting through WrestleMania weekend in 2016. Balor lost the title to Joe a few weeks later and set the record at the time for the longest NXT Championship reign at 292 days (this record has been broken by Adam Cole in 2020).
After dropping the NXT title and putting over Shinsuke Nakamura as the face of NXT for the foreseeable future, he was ready to make the jump to the main roster in WWE. Balor debuted on Monday Night RAW in July 2016 in the WWE draft, defeating the face of the company Roman Reigns on July 25 (his 35th birthday) to earn the right to become the first ever WWE Universal Champion at SummerSlam the following month.
Balor became the first Universal Champion by beating Seth the Rollins at SummerSlam 2016, but only for one night as he tore his labrum during the match. He relinquished the title and was away for 8 months to give the injury time to heal and returned to TV on April 3, 2017 the night after WrestleMania 33. In June of that year at Extreme Rules, he lost a fatal five-way match to determine the number one contender for Brock Lesnar’s Universal Championship (Balor did eventually get another opportunity at the Universal title against Lesnar at Royal Rumble 2019).
In October 2017 at TLC Balor faced off with his successor as leader of Bullet Club in Japan AJ Styles, albeit it was a one-time thing (Balor was originally scheduled to meet Bray Wyatt in a face-off between the Demon King and Sister Abigail, an angle that totally flopped to be perfectly honest).
The Demon King defeated Styles and the two men had a heartwarming moment after the match. He entered the 2018 Royal Rumble match in which he lasted over 57 minutes after entering at number 2. After this breakout performance, Balor feuded with The Miz and Seth Rollins over the Intercontinental Championship, but he would not capture the title at WrestleMania 34.
In June 2018, he competed in his first Money in the Bank ladder match but was unsuccessful. On the August 20 RAW, Finn finally got his match for the Universal Championship after basically two years against the new champion Roman Reigns (in which he was unsuccessful in capturing the title). Several months later in January 2019, Balor competed against Jordan Devin at NXT UK Takeover: Blackpool, the first ever Takeover event for NXT UK. Immediately after this, Balor pinned John Cena on RAW to earn the right to challenge Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship at Royal Rumble.
Finn earned a lot of respect that night because he delivered an excellent match with WWE’s top star for the top title. He would then feud with Bobby Lashley over the IC title and win his first title on the main roster in February 2019 (then lose it back to Lashley, only to regain it again at WrestleMania 35 under his “Demon” persona). It’s a big deal if WWE trusts you as a superstar to win a title at WWE’s biggest event of the year.
Balor moved to SmackDown Live a couple weeks after Mania, dropping the Intercontinental Championship to Shinsuke Nakamura at Extreme Rules in July 2019 and losing a singles match to the debuting Fiend (a masked incarnation of Bray Wyatt) the following month at SummerSlam 2019.
In October 2019 after a two-month hiatus, Balor returned to NXT, which had grown from a developmental brand during his first stint in 2014-‘16 into the third global brand within WWE. The Prince claimed, “I don’t watch this business, this business watches me.” On February 16, 2020 at NXT Takeover: Portland, The Prince had a match with Johnny Gargano after attacking Gargano the previous October upon returning to NXT but this was quickly resolved as Balor came out victorious.
Four months later at Takeover: In Your House, The Prince wrestled and defeated Damian Priest in retaliation to an assault from behind two months earlier (this match was a coming out party for Priest). On September 8, 2020, Balor won the NXT title for a second time, defeating Adam Cole to win the vacant championship.
At Takeover: 31 in October, in an extremely physical encounter with Kyle O’Reilly of The Undisputed Era (O’Reilly became the clear No. 2 in the group behind the leader Adam Cole after this NXT Championship match), Balor broke his jaw in two places (legitimately). The two men had a rematch at New Year’s Evil on January 6, 2021 and Balor broke O’Reilly’s jaw (kayfabe). The NXT Champion claimed the next week that “they stopped manufacturing the cloth I’m cut from.”