Mustafa Ali Explains Why RETRIBUTION Failed In WWE

In a recent interview with Sportskeeda WrestleBinge, Mustafa Ali has shed some light on his thoughts about the RETRIBUTION stable - including background details regarding the creation of the group, and the possible reason it never got off the ground.

"The fatal thing about it was it never had a 'why?', as much as I tried with online promos. I gave everything a reason because here's the thing - I didn't come up with the concept of RETRIBUTION. I didn't come up with the names. I was just kind of given this thing, but at the end of the day, it was an opportunity."

RETRIBUTION consisted of various masked Superstars who already existed on the WWE roster under different names. With Ali revealed as the leader, the rest of the stable consisted of T-Bar (Dominik Dijakovic), Mace (Dio Maddin), Slapjack (Shane Thorne), Reckoning (Mia Yim), and Retaliation (Mercedes Martinez, who requested her release from the group after a few months and returned to the NXT brand.)

On trying to forge a deeper creative meaning for the group himself, Ali explains:

"I [came up with] reasons for the names. I had reasons why we were all together and what brought us together. I had answered the whys, but the problem is the whys never made it to TV for you, the viewer, to understand the whys. Although social media has a lot of reach, there's nothing that beats live TV because that's what gets the most views. So we were just kind of, I don't wanna say a victim, but it was just the placement on the card. Things took priority and ultimately, I think because the people that put it together, they didn't have the real ‘why’ initially, that's why it kind of just fell through the cracks. I went down swinging with it. I am forever thankful for the opportunity because I think it proved that I could cut one hell of a promo and that I could be a leader.

"It was just the story never really developed and why. People knock about The RETRIBUTION because they always lost. Yeah, that didn't help, but at the same time, it didn't hurt because as long as the losses meant something and we were going somewhere, we would have been fine. So my big take on it is I don't think RETRIBUTION really sucked. I think we just never got an opportunity to answer the question of 'why?'"

H/T to WrestlingNews.co