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Finn Bálor

Irish professional wrestler

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ984334
Source-derived summary

Fergal Devitt (born 25 July 1981) is an Irish professional wrestler. As of May 2014, he is signed to WWE, where he performs on the SmackDown brand under the ring name Finn Bálor ().

Devitt began his career in 2001, before becoming widely known for his tenure with New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), under the ring name Prince Devitt. Within the promotion, he is a three-time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion and six-time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champion, having held the title twice with Minoru and four times with Ryusuke Taguchi. He is also a two-time winner of the Best of the Super Juniors tournament, having won in 2010 and 2013, as well as being a founding member and the original leader of the Bullet Club stable. Through NJPW's working relationship with Mexican promotion Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL), Devitt also wrestled there, becoming a one-time NWA World Historic Middleweight Champion. He also wrestled for a number of independent promotions, becoming a one-time ICW Zero-G Champion, one-time RPW British Cruiserweight Champion and a two-time NWA British Commonwealth Heavyweight Champion.

After signing with WWE's developmental system, NXT, and adopting his current ring name, Bálor won the NXT Championship, with his 292-day reign being the longest in the championship's history until March 2020. Also during his time in NXT, Bálor became the first co-winner of the inaugural Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic with Samoa Joe. Shortly after arriving on the main roster, Bálor became the first wrestler in WWE history to win a world title in their pay-per-view debut, by becoming the inaugural WWE Universal Champion at SummerSlam 2016.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Finn Bálor” is irish professional wrestler. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Finn, Bálor and Irish, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1981, 2014, 2001, 2010—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1981-07-25. For this dossier, Finn, Bálor and Irish is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “irish professional wrestler” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q984334. VIAF identifies the subject as 4305155566461513380005. The Library of Congress control number is no2019053637. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 2014, 2001 and 2010.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Finn Bálor”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Finn Bálor primary sources, Finn Bálor archive and Finn research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Finn Bálor”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Finn Bálor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.