Vince McMahon makes the major storyline decisions whether it is for an individual star, tag-team, or a stable. Previously, it was also noted Vince possibly canceled a WrestleMania 38 match. Speaking about stables, the RETRIBUTION stable had a disastrous run in the company and after having a poor reception from the fans, the idea was dropped. RETRIBUTION was originally comprised of Dominik Dijakovic, Dio Maddin, Mia Yim, Shane Thorne, Mercedes Martinez, and Mustafa Ali. During an appearance on the Two Man Power Trip podcast, former WWE star Shane Thorne aka Slapjack talked about the stable.
Shane Thorne reveals the huge names pitched for the stable
While ultimately, Mustafa Ali was unveiled as the RETRIBUTION leader, Shane Thorne revealed some huge names that were pitched to be the leader of the vigilante group. He named Shane McMahon and WWE Hall of Famer Edge, and they would have feuded with Bray Wyatt and The Hurt Business. Not only those but WWE Chairman Vince McMahon’s name was also pitched. He noted how many top names of the company returned and Vince had many options to choose from but in the end, it was Mustafa Ali:
“My theory, I’ve never been told anything solid, but my theory was, we were running out of the PC at the time with a skeleton crew, none of the big stars were coming every week. We moved to the ThunderDome, all the big stars came back, and Vince had his stars to play with now. That’s what happened. When your TV show gets the main characters back, you’re going to use the main characters.
He added:
“We pitched ideas to have a lot of different people as the leader like Shane McMahon, Edge, or someone higher. We pitched for Vince to be the leader as well. We went as high as possible with who the leader would be. We wanted to be attached to one of the main characters. I guess, at the start, we were. We were doing stuff with Bray Wyatt and Hurt Business,” he said. “The only direction we got was after we did something. We got a lot of creative freedom in that, to an extent. ‘Be like this,’ then we’d do it, ‘sort of not like that.’ It was very trial and error and I think they got bored of it, honestly. Ali becoming the leader was not something we pitched, but it was a happy coincidence. It was great when we found that out. We were stoked about that, then the little storyline we had there with him turning his back, that was great and was a story. Then it wrapped up and finished again.”
