Road Warrior Animal Explains Why Retribution's Push Isn't Working
09/22/2020 11:11 am EDT
The Retribution faction saw its push increase exponentially on this week's Raw as its main members got new looks, three of them got new names and they competed in the main event six-man tag match against The Hurt Business before brawling with the rest of the Raw locker room. Unfortunately very little about the group has been well-received by fans, especially on social media. @WrestleVotes even reported on Tuesday morning that the group was met with laughter backstage thanks to their new masks and names (T-Bar, Mace and SlapJack).
WWE Hall of Famer Road Warrior Animal (Joe Laurinaitis) spoke about the group on the latest episode of Sportskeeda's Legion of Raw podcast and broke down the reasons why the group isn't connecting with fans.
"They got the open and the close which are the two hottest parts of the show," he explained (h/t Sportskeeda for transcript). "The rest of the show for three hours or two hours and forty-five minutes is filler, right? They did not do the show any justice."
He later went into detail about what the group needs.
"They needed to have a big name who's going to be behind the whole Retribution deal that's a main card guy cause you could see in that last match even, the difference between the main card guys and the NXT guys," he said. "Nothing against the NXT guys, listen we all had to go through stepping stones in wrestling to get to be the top dog — I did it, [Road Warrior] Hawk did it, [Rick] Rude did it, [Curt] Henning did it, we all did it growing up, Davey Boy [Smith], Owen [Hart], everybody. But you can't expect to throw guys that barely are working main events in NXT to be the main event on TV or Raw. What do they expect is going to happen? On top of that, you take your hottest heel team and you have them play babyface against Retribution. Are you kidding me?"
PWInsider's Mike Johnson reported on Monday that WWE plans on having Retribution involved in the main event of Survivor Series, which is all the way in late November.
WWE's next pay-per-view, Clash of Champions, takes place this Sunday. Check out the full card below:
- WWE Championship: Drew McIntyre vs. Randy Orton (Ambulance Match)
- WWE Universal Championship: Roman Reigns vs. Jey Uso
- Intercontinental Championship: Jeff Hardy vs. AJ Styles vs. Sami Zayn (Ladder Match)
- United States Championship: Bobby Lashley vs. Apollo Crews
- Raw Women's Championship: Asuka vs. Zelina Vega
- SmackDown Women's Championship: Bayley vs. Nikki Cross
- SmackDown Tag Team Championships: Cesaro and Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Lucha House Party
- Raw Tag Team Championships: Street Profits vs. Angel Garza & Andrade
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