10 Most Shocking Revelations From WWE In 2020
3. The Misadventures Of Mustafa Ali
Shocking not just how WWE have bungled a tremendous professional wrestler, but how they've done it twice, Mustafa Ali's 2020 has been the sort of bad that should only feature on the first chapter of his DVD boxset, rather than the first disc.
His bad luck in 2019 was the sort of thing that could be saved by the strange ways pro wrestling works. "Strange" being the operative word when - during the pre-global health crisis part of the year - a series of glitches revealed that a hacker was trying to f*ck sh*t up for folk on SmackDown. After weeks of teasing what he knew about various wrestlers, he dropped a bomb on Fire & Desire right before WrestleMania. It was silly, but this was evidence that it had a destination.
Who had that destination as "a passing comment while trying to get over WWE's worst idea of the year" in the office pool?
The angle was parked and then pied off completely, only to be dusted off during Ali's reveal as the leader of invading faction Retribution. As devoted twitter followers did the hard yards narratively (instead of the actual company booking it), Ali turned heel as the boss of the possibly the worst stable in WWE history.
This, like the hacker's Otis/Mandy/Sonya/Dolph stuff, was another big reveal that promised a sh*tload more than it was ever destined to deliver.