RETRIBUTION ran roughshod and completely annihilated each and every Superstar put in front of them in order to achieve the goals they set out to do prior to making their main roster debut. Several months after dominating the entire WWE, the stable imploded and was broken up, with Mustafa Ali, MACE and T-BAR staying on RAW, while Reckoning and Slapjack (F.K.A. Shane Thorne) was rumored to be moved to the blue brand.
Former WWE Star Shane Thorne (Shane Haste) recently appeared on "The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling" podcast, where he talked about how when RETRIBUTION first started appearing it was just random people trashing the place and it was not them, but he really loved the segments. Shane also talked about how when they started adding people to the faction Mace was the first one and he did stuff backstage that was really cool, but it ended up becoming something other than what they really wanted to do.
Shane Thorne said:
“When they first started Retribution, these segments were awesome. Flipping cars, throwing Molotov cocktails, trashing the place. I don’t know who did that, but that wasn’t us.” “When they were like ‘yeah we’re gonna have some people join Retribution’, I’m like ‘f**k yeah man. I’m going to smash some people and do all this s**t and just gonna be like hooligans doing all these pre-taped things.”
“Mace was the first one actually. He did stuff in the backstage. They did like backstage stuff with Retribution. He was one of the people there launching people over boxes and stuff like that. He was like ‘yeah this is cool’, and I’m like ‘f**k yes. We’re gonna get in there, and we’re gonna do that. And then it did not become that at all.”
Shane Thorne also spoke about how a number of huge names were pitched as RETRIBUTION's leader such as Shane McMahon, WWE Hall of Famer Edge and even WWE Chairman Vince McMahon himself.
Shane Thorne said:
“We pitched ideas to have a lot of different people as the leader like Shane McMahon or Edge.” “Someone higher, like as high as possible, we went as high as possible. We pitched to Vince [McMahon] to be the leader as well, and we went as high as possible as to who the leader would be. We wanted to be attached to one of the main characters.”
Shane Thorne then talked about how they only got a little bit of creative freedom after they began to do some things and how he thinks the WWE just got bored with their group and storyline, but they were really stoked when Mustafa Ali was revealed as their leader and the storyline of him turning his back on the group was great.
Shane Thorne said:
“The only direction we ever really got was after we did something, so we got a lot of creative freedom in that to an extent.” “I think they [WWE management] just got bored of it honestly. Ali becoming the leader was not something we pitched, but it was a happy coincidence.”
“That was great. When we found that out, we were pretty stoked about that. Then the little storyline we had there of him turning his back on those guys. I’m like ‘this is great. this is a story’, and then wrapped up and finished again.”
You can check out Shane Thorne's comments in the video below. H/T to Wrestling Inc. for transcribing the above quotes.
