WWE's Vince McMahon, Others Pitched As Leader Of RETRIBUTION
It was me all along!
Feb 24, 2022
Speaking with the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast, Shane Thorne revealed more about the short-lived WWE faction RETRIBUTION, of which he was a member as SLAPJACK.
The group initially looked dominant, swarming Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown in the early months. Once the stable's members were revealed, though, with T-BAR, MACE, RECKONING and SLAPJACK all being a part of the faction, the angle quickly lost steam and they had disbanded by March of 2021.
Mustafa Ali was eventually unveiled as the leader of RETRIBUTION but Thorne revealed the faction initially pitched for Vince McMahon, Shane McMahon and others to lead the stable.
Speaking about why the faction failed in WWE, Thorne noted: "My theory, I've never been told anything solid, but my theory was, we were running out of the PC at the time with a skeleton crew, none of the big stars were coming every week. We moved to the ThunderDome, all the big stars came back, and Vince had his stars to play with now. That's what happened. When your TV show gets the main characters back, you're going to use the main characters.
"We pitched ideas to have a lot of different people as the leader like Shane McMahon, Edge, or someone higher. We pitched for Vince to be the leader as well. We went as high as possible with who the leader would be. We wanted to be attached with one of the main characters. I guess, at the start, we were. We were doing stuff with Bray Wyatt and The Hurt Business. The only direction we really got was after we did something. We got a lot of creative freedom in that, to an extent. 'Be like this,' then we'd do it, 'sort of not like that.' It was very trial and error and I think they got bored of it, honestly.
"Ali becoming the leader was not something we pitched, but it was a happy coincidence. It was great when we found that out. We were stoked about that, then the little storyline we had there with him turning his back, that was great and was a story. Then it wrapped up and finished again."
Shane Thorne has since been released by WWE and he recently resurfaced at an NJPW Strong taping using his old Shane Haste name.
H/T to Fightful
