Who Came Up With Those Awful WWE RETRIBUTION Names?
This is who to blame for Slapjack, T-Bar, Reckoning, Mace and Retaliation...
RETRIBUTION will forever go down in the annuls of wrestling history as one of the outright worst factions to grace WWE. Of course, that's through no fault of those roped into being a part of this doomed stable, but more an indictment of the presentation and booking of the group - including the utterly daft Slapjack, T-Bar, Reckoning, Mace and Retaliation monikers handed out to its initial members.
Speaking during an interview with Fightful Select, Shane Haste - formerly Slapjack - has finally revealed who came up with the god-awful names for the RETRIBUTION crew.
As Haste explained, these names were handed down to him, Dominik Dijakovic, Mia Yim, Dio Maddin and Mercedes Martinez by none other than Bruce Prichard.
The TMDK man explained how Dijakovic had pitched several of the members to be in RETRIBUTION, although they wanted to go by different names because... well, clearly because what they were given by Prichard absolutely sucked. As Haste put it, the talents themselves thought the names were goofy, but the positive of this was that these NXT names were getting to appear on the main roster.
Nowadays, Shane Haste is a part of the JONAH-led reformed The Mighty Don't Kneel in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, primarily competing in NJPW Strong. Having first signed with WWE in early-2016, the one-time Shane Thorne departed the company in November 2021. Despite being moved to SmackDown in April '21 after RETRIBUTION folded, the Australian never got the chance to resurface on WWE programming before his release.
Where Haste's RETRIBUTION cohorts are concerned, Mia Yim is nowadays back in IMPACT Wrestling, Mercedes Martinez is the ROH Women's Champion, Dio Maddin is part of Maximum Male Models on SmackDown as ma.çé, and Dominik Dijakovic is bafflingly still T-Bar - where he can usually be found losing in comprehensive fashion on WWE Main Event.
Thankfully, recent reports suggest that Dijakovic may be about to drop the T-Bar schtick as Triple H looks to revert the powerhouse to something more akin to Dominik's time in NXT.