RETRIBUTION Buried Badly In Debut Match On WWE Raw
Retribution #Retribution
RETRIBUTION and Mustafa Ali was buried by The Fiend Monday night on Raw.
Credit: WWE.com
Mustafa Ali’s deceptively doomed run as leader of RETRIBUTION appears to have ended before even starting as the upstart stable lost its debut match to The Hurt Business.
Though this result was hardly a surprise, the lightning-fast amount of time it took for WWE to run Mustafa Ali’s otherwise intriguing heel turn into the ground was quite jarring.
On a night where RETRIBUTION kicked off Raw by picking a fight with the resurgent Fiend, RETRIBUTION lost a eight-man tag team match as T-BAR was submitted clean by Bobby Lashley’s Hurt Lock. If that wasn’t enough of an unceremonious sendoff for the group, The Fiend singlehandedly destroyed Mustafa Ali—who failed to properly explain his actions prior to the match—and the rest of the ill-fated stable.
Ali went on to fruitlessly explain himself in a backstage promo where he admitted to being the hacker on Friday Night SmackDown.
WWE’s years-long tendencies to pull the rug out form up-and-coming stars once again manifested itself in RETRIBUTION. A band of fresh faces getting sacrificed at the expense of established stars has been WWE’s self-destructive calling card for years now.
WWE doubled down on its obsession with the past as 43-year-old AJ Styles, who debuted a new manager in former Raw Underground security guard Jordan Omogbehin, defeated Matt Riddle in Riddle’s Monday night debut.
Riddle was called up to the main roster just a fews short months ago, picking up an elusive win over Styles in what now seems like an eternity.
As WWE continues to punt on one storyline after another, there will continue to be no incentive for its dwindling viewers to tune in. With the luster of The ThunderDome now long gone, WWE once again finds itself flirting with record lows after enjoying modest bounces for both nights of the 2020 WWE Draft, a former drawing card for the company.
Once rumored to headline Survivor Series, it’s hard to imagine RETRIBUTION commanding any main event real estate in November after being discarded just one week in.