4 Ups & 10 Downs From WWE Raw (Sep 7)

3. The Good Of RETRIBUTION

So despite all the negatives written about earlier, RETRIBUTION’s appearance Monday night did at least one good thing.

The group’s promo for the first time laid out a little info about them and why they’ve been attacking everyone for the past month. And while the promo itself was overwritten with flowery language, it did spell out a couple of things.

RETRIBUTION is apparently comprised of “discarded and disowned” wrestlers who WWE cut loose. They have no allegiance to WWE, as they noted that the ThunderDome, hailed by the company as a state-of-the-art, ground-breaking facility, is just a façade dressing up the same broken WWE. The anarchists are here to spread fear and darkness over WWE and attack any and everyone.

So now, you know generally who they are and why they’re here. And that allows you to begin speculating. You can start looking at the list of wrestlers released earlier this spring, along with others who haven’t been on TV in a while, and start drawing conclusions. It could actually lead somewhere cool if you get some great reveals, like AOP coming right back, Rusev, Erick Rowan, Kassius Ohno, Sarah Logan, Ronda Rousey, or even CM Punk.

Of course, if the reveals are just the same NXT wrestlers who have been under the hoods all along, then it’s gonna be quite the letdown. Not a knock on Mia Yim and Dominik Dijakovic, but they aren’t going to really move the needle here.