4 Ups & 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Dec 14)

5. Can Someone Explain This?

Looking for logic and consistency in wrestling storylines is a futile exercise normally, but the entire saga involving RETRIBUTION would drive such an explorer to drink heavily.

During the last two weeks, the group suffered two humiliating losses, with Reckoning losing twice, compounding months of piss-poor booking. So naturally, group leader Mustafa Ali points to their lone significant win, a victory over a fractured Raw men’s Survivor Series team last month.

Mace defeated Ricochet in a match that saw Slapjack and T-Bar get involved to stop the One and Only, because clearly the big man couldn’t win on his own.

So here’s the question: Why does RETRIBUTION care about winning matches? This group’s supposed mission is to “shut it down,” but they lose far more matches than they win, and when they do win, it’s not a convincing victory or something that’s built upon. (Odds are RETRIBUTION will lose a match next week, and they won’t have a match at TLC at all.)

Why do they even go through the motions of having a match if they’re just going to cheat to win – and if they don’t they’ll lose? Just come out, beat people up and then have a decisive match, win or lose.

This entire RETRIBUTION angle is so far past its sell-by date that nearly everything they try is destined to fail. We’d have to see a sustained, consistent effort for anything to register as a positive at this point.