WWE Gimmicks That FAILED The HARDEST Every Year (1985-2025)
6. Retribution (2020)
The onset of the global pandemic forced WWE behind closed doors in 2020. To their credit, the company worked hard to entertain people stuck at home during a scary time, and various cinematic-style matches showed the way. So, mind you, did some of the empty arena promos. Without fans, wrestlers could explore a more intimate style of speech that was grounded in realism.
This contrast between the cartoony cinematic stuff and grittier style made Raw and SmackDown interesting to watch. By August, it was decided that a new group should come up from NXT and rock the foundations of the main roster. Thus, Retribution was born, and it went off the deep end in a hurry. Like, within weeks.
A masked gang ambushed episodes early in the month, and that raised a lot of questions about who was behind the attacks. Later, the ticked off NXT group revealed their intentions, and they started giving themselves goofy names whilst wearing even goofier masks. T-BAR, Mace, Slapjack and pals were here to take over whilst bagging themselves WWE contracts (despite already having WWE contracts).
Mustafa Ali was then outed at the faction's leader, but he always felt at odds with the masked troops following him around. Retribution never seemed like that much of a threat to anyone after the first flurry of activity when they were burning generators and destroying the ringside area. They floundered and flopped hard before WWE pulled the plug on the idea completely in March 2021. No-one was sad to see the back of it.