Slapjack, Key Bar, Mace, Reckoning, and Mustafa Ali. For some reason we didn't change his name. This was retribution though, a group that was formed in 2020 and you do have to feel sorry for Shane Thorne, Dominic DiJack, Mia Yim, Mercedes-Lartinez and Dio Madden because they had no chance to hell as soon as they did get put into this stable. I mean, listen to the names I just read out to you and also look at the masks. I mean, I don't want to be horrible, but that's probably something I would have drawn when I was 12. Not true, I'm a terrible drawer. Mostly though, it was just such a last minute thrown together mess during the pandemic and I will say that's the only reason that it does get a small asterisk by me. Because so many people were throwing things at the wall during COVID times because nobody knew what the flood was going down. But yeah, I get it. How do we keep interest up when we don't have fans in the arena? But I'm also happy to tell you, retribution wasn't it. I also think this was the opposite of what we should have been doing our audience, which was providing a distraction and providing entertainment. and of course this was looking out into the real world and trying to tie into what I was happening there. And nobody needed more of that stuff when you were watching your TV, because believe you, me, it was kind of crap all round. But still, on the 3rd of August, Raw, all of a sudden the light started to flicker, which does happen in pro wrestling a lot, when we did see a bunch of mass cooligans, I suppose, set fire to a generator. How dare they? Later on the week, they returned on Smackdown to beat up the commentary team and cut the ring ropes with a chainsaw, and you have to forgive me for laughing, but once again, this is something that a 16-year-old comes up with when they're trying to write edgy novel, like, oh, you know what wouldaws and somebody goes through a ring rope you're like okay well that does sound cool but actually what have you achieved especially because when we got to roar the ring ropes were back because w w w w w we could afford new ring ropes on the august of 10th raw two they just smashed a bunch of windows and i remember thinking this at the time and i'll say it again now All that came into my brain was, well, their parents are probably going to be pretty mad. Now, it was made pretty clear that Retribution's big problem was just WWE in general. They were a big corporate entity doing terrible things, but how petty vandalism was going to stop that I do not know when it all went bad because we took this narrative and we threw it in the Because. Because it was around about halfway through September when it was announced that yes, Retribution had signed exclusively with Raw, which just bring up a couple of questions. One, why would the Red Brand want to sign a bunch of people that have actively said we want to destroy you? And two, if you sign contracts to be part of the company that you're actively saying is a bad company, then you have absolutely no morals, you don't know what you're talking about, and this story makes no sense. Now, T-Barr would go on to claim that in the contract it said we can do whatever the hell we want, but how on earth would that ever be a thing? Nobody would put that in writing because WW every single week would go, listen, this is costing us a lot of money, because every week they just cut the ring ropes. It would just make your life so much harder and then what happened in their first proper match? He lost to the hurt business via disqualification. The more things change, the more they stay the same. This also happened after T-bar had poked Bobby Lashley in the eye, so once again we were playing

fast and loose with the rules, because how many times have you seen that before with nothing going on? And eventually the rest of the locker room ran out to start a big old brawl, but why? What was you so worried about? It's like, oh no, they're going to like make us pay extra for our glasses after they ruin our vision and that would suck, but I don't think it's enough to trigger it, man, we've got to beat you up.

It was around this time as well when the whole gang got introduced, but once again, it was Die Jack Thorn and Madden that got the worst of this because they were slapjack, T-bar and Mace. I understand that I've talked about this once, but I need to talk about it again, what are those names? Where did they come from? And even if you are based on Antifa stuff that was happening in the real world, nobody was called that. Nobody's been called that. Even in flipping Narnia, nobody was called that. This just meanded on for ages after this as they carried on doing juvenile attacks. I want to make it very clear, this was not on the talent. He was all very skilled professional wrestlers who were doing what they were told, but nobody could have got this over because almost from day one, whatever the idea was going to be, had a massive hole in it. We're here to ruin the WWE and we're going to do that by signing for WWE. You also had to wear stuff like this I also keep going on about, but it's like the first movie you would shoot in college, we're on a stew-street project guys, so what can we use? Are we found this trash can? Why don't we cut it up and paint it? It also felt utterly directionless, and after they had sewn those deals, all they really did was hang around and play Nintendo when I suppose somebody in creator was like we probably should do something extra here when we found our leader. Can you believe it? It was the hacker. Now, during the 5th of October Raw when it was meant to be R Lee versus MVP, when out came Retribution to beat all of them up. And just when it looked like Mustafa was going to stand with the baby faces, of course, he teamed up with Retribution and went, ta-da, it was me, Austin, it was me all along,

when at least somebody in Creative went, you know what we dropped a good old few months ago? It was that hack a gimmick we've been doing on Smackdown, so why don't we push all our potatoes together? Because once again, this was a pandemic storyline that somebody had come up with and never bothered to actually finish, which was some dude in a very blue room looking at screens and tried to cause a lot of carnage. And everybody said this was meant to be Mustafa Ali, but then we never even heard a peep more out of this. When yes, we get to this point and he said, ha ha, it was me using those computers and I was doing it to help retribution. Now, don't worry that these two never cross past before this and anything that hacker was doing stopped months before it. we just had to accept it for what it was. Now, the one hand, I do appreciate WWE trying to tie up loose ends, but on another, don't start storylines that you don't have an ending for, which was exactly the problem with retribution. We just made them up one day and said, go. Now, it's great news from Mustafa Ralee, because he did deserve a greater position on the show, but let's go to the 19th October Raw when we did get a 4-on-4 match with the Hurt business, I will let you hazard a guess how this ended. Because he was indeed T-Barr submitting to the Hurt lock. So all this told the audience was that these guys are losers unless they have a bunch of chainsaws in the head. I'm the hell of this old pay-per-view as well. Slapjack lost to Bobby Lashley.

So at the moment, you were going through their win-loss record going, all right, okay, you cause a lot of us to begin with, but now you kind of suck. Even when the entire stable tried to get to the hurt business, eventually they would run away like cowardly heels, and then what happened on the 27th of October, we did this match again and retribute a loss. I mean, it was VADQ, but still, Mustafa Rale, decided, oh, hey, Cedric Alexander, I'm going to smash you with a chair, right in front of the referee, and it would take another two weeks before they finally won the damn thing. That wasn't against her business, though, that wasn't the 16th of a member, Roar, and to try and tie into the Survivor series, series they beat the very odd team of Seamus, Keith Lee, Riddle and Braun-Stromen. The day after this as well they then hacked the WWE social media channels and actually as a creative idea that was pretty good but look at the sum of the stuff they did right and why is it in that stupid stupid text? And it was just like a 13 year old kid trying to be edgy as they talked in generalities.

Like, oh, can you see what we've done here and you don't know what's coming? And man, this is all your fault. It's on your shoulders. But the best one was how does it feel to lose control? And I was like, remember, I understand that one. that's the real life, restless say, please, somebody give us a better storyline here because we're absolutely drowning.

The November 26 episode of main event must have been the low play. That's the real life, restless, say, please, somebody give us a better storyline here,

because we are absolutely drowning. The November 26 episode of main event must have been the low point too, because they were appearing on Ms. TV, and have a guess who they decided to attack? Again, it was around Survivor Series time. That's right, the returning gobbledy gooker. Soon after this as well, they also got into a program with Rikashehe where every single member of the group was able to beat him when they said, oh, hello, Rick, would you now like to join us? And Rick said no, when they all went off down separate pathways. So if you ever ask yourself, why did Rickashay leave WWE? It was stuff like this. He got his ass kicked and he was never allowed to get revenge. They then went on to a few with the New Day, which at least had some substance to it, because of course, the rumor had always been that Mustafa Ali was going to be Daniel Bryan's opponent at that WrestleMania where Kofi Kingston took over. When Ali suffered a horrible concussion, he got taken off TV. Somebody had to take his place. It was Covey Kingston, so rightfully so.

Now, Ali was like, I need my revenge. And Kobe was like, well, I didn't do anything, dude. So that part was pretty good. Then of course, on the February 21st, 2021 episode of Royal, T-Barr and Mace did indeed lose to the new day. So he may as well just looked at Mustafa and really and said, you absolutely suck, go do something else.

That was actually true as well, because Ali did kick off after this and said,

you guys are not very good. When he took on Riddle at Fast Lane, and yes, he lost there too, where eventually Retribution did fall out with each other because it turned out they were not on the same page. But why were they on the same page to begin with? I don't know. So he just meant that Mason friends did walk away from Mustafa as he sat there looking all sad. But actually the best part is what happened after this. Because Ali started to team up with Mansour as Mason Teabar remained a team. But what happened a couple of years after this, whatever the flub it was, I forget the timeline. Marseille and Manswa became the maximum male models. And while they did get released from WW, they have taken that gimmick and ran with it. So maybe if you don't get retribution, you don't get those two together. And right now in 2025, so that's 2026, their personification of Goofy Wrestling for Life, they make me laugh and they're awesome. So I will take retribution if it leads me to that. Of course, WW couldn't help themselves, so Reckoning and Slapjack just disappeared from our screens when poor Mason Teabbar were broken up because they got separated in the draft. Mia Yim then just did start calling herself Mia Yim again for absolutely no reason. When Hersh Shane Thorne and Mercedes Martinez got released through no fault of their own. They had been put in a

creative black hole and it was them that ended up paying for it not cool. Now some people were hired back

which was very nice but actually there was an extra part to this on the October 25th, 22 episode of

NXT because DiJack was now all of a sudden on my third brand and he burned his retribution mask and said, well, I'm back now. And it was kind of like, okay, yeah, we understand that. But everybody else has just dropped it and not saying anything. Maybe you should follow suit. Now, let's be honest, I think what WW was trying to achieve here was a brand new version of the Nexus. And if we had booked it that way, it would have totally worked. Let's say they took out of Drew McIntyre, who was the world champion at the time,

but we did the exact opposite and they went against people that weren't in the main event and they lost and they lost and they lost. There was also really no thought that went into this other than, uh, well, it's a group that we could try. I want to make it clear. The biggest thing that people talked about then and the biggest thing people talk about now is the chainsaw. Which is just such a stupid idea. Unless it's attached to a calancer in gears of four, it's a different video. Nearly every review about the group said the same thing as well, and that was they're meant to be dangerous, but they're anything but. And the word unfocus kept coming up time and time again, as well as the obvious comparisons to the Antitha

corporations that were out there, but once again it was a loose tie-in, not something you wanted to see on your wrestling television. I just don't think the fans wanted this, they were desperate for an escape at the time, and yeah, by the time you have a bunch of rebels to sign a contract, what else are you going to flubbing do? You can't rally against the system if you are the system and surprise, surprise when it came to the end of year awards. Guess who got worse gimmick once again through no fault of their own, it was retribution. You just weren't allowing these members to use the tools they had amassed over the last few years. And Fight Full Select reported this as well, even people in the company were like, this comes off like a bad B movie or even worse a C video game, they weren't wrong. So it really was just a lack of motivation or at least panic in the WW creative team that came up with this and without putting any extra thought into it, just went, we've got that guy, we've got this guy and those two are quite big so they'll be able to come across as intimidating, but it's all about your actions, not just how your physique looks. And after a while, it just felt like kids in the playground, trying to like graffiti on the wall. Think about what we could have done with all of these guys as well, given what they have done since. Look at Mustafa Ali. He is totally flying. It's no wonder that eventually they weren't allowed to go any higher, because it's that classic thing when you do get put in a bad spot.

All of a sudden the creative team thinks well it must have been down to them when it comes to retribuse and it absolutely wasn't.

You could have had the rock Steve Austin and the Undertaker and if you had booked them this way, it would have been a total bust.