When it debuted, Retribution was seemingly set to be the next big thing. Unfortunately, it was quickly dropped, and almost every wrestler who was part of the faction has been released. One such member of the faction is Mace, now known as Mason D. Madden. He recently reflected on the group’s downfall.
The former WWE Superstar was recently interviewed by Denise Salcedo. In one highlight, he discussed how the faction came together, and he looked back the stable’s breakup.
“When it stopped being… Um… So if you remember, Retribution segments were really like, we were finishing the show. We had the really cool angle with the Hurt Business. Which did really well… Everywhere. We had a really cool segment with Windham [Bray Wyatt] and Alexa [Bliss] and there were… We had a lot of cool moments, but as soon as those cool moments started drifting down, and we were like, ‘Uh… They are not really feeling it, I think they just want to kill it,’ I could tell it was probably time to start thinking of something else.
“I think… Yeah, we broke up. They had me and T-Bar Chokeslam Ali and then there was no direction for a while. But it was a gradual descent of like, ‘Oh yeah we were in these highly featured segments.’ So we’re in these kind of featured segments but… Yeah, Thunderdome was wild.”
Mace is convinced that Vince McMahon lost interest in Retribution
Mace also discussed how he felt like Vince McMahon did not love Retribution. He shared his belief that McMahon lost interest in the stable once it became clear that it was not going anywhere.
“I assume he didn’t love it,” Mace said. “Okay. Here’s me reading tea leaves like some sort of wizard or mystic. If I had to guess, Vince [McMahon] has these ideas for things. And he doesn’t always necessarily know where it’s going to go and he doesn’t necessarily always know how they’re going to get there. And that’s part of the genius of what he has been able to create over the course of forever.
“But especially in these later years, it was kind of just like, ‘I want to do that Antifa thing.’ And they were like, ‘Okay, well, what does that lead to? I don’t know.’ So when it kind of ended up looking like we couldn’t go anywhere with it, he just lost interest. So I don’t think he hated it. I just think he just… If he loved it then we’d still be doing it.”
Click here to see what Mace had to say about his WWE release.
