12 Ups And 16 Downs For WWE In 2021

15. RETRIBUTION Sputters To Halt

Retribution Raw
WWE.com

By the time 2021 started, RETRIBUTION already was something of a joke.

But they hit on an interesting idea early in the year, seemingly building to a Mustafa Ali/Kofi Kingston feud based on KofiMania growing out of Ali getting injured and Kingston taking his spot in the Elimination Chamber in 2019. It was a 2-year-old tie-in and a bit of a stretch, but the potential was there: Ali massacres Xavier Woods, leading to Kofi having to work his way through all of RETRIBUTION to get to Ali at WrestleMania 37. The story wrote itself.

And then it didn’t happen. Ali lost to Woods in February, and the group would disband before Mania. RETRIBUTION always was a hapless group, but still, this was a complete abandoning of any hope for the unit and jettisoning an attempt at long-term storytelling.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.