Two WWE Raw Stars Reportedly Jumping to SmackDown

While WWE hasn't indicated there will be any kind of Draft in the near future, two Monday Night Raw wrestlers are reportedly getting shuffled over to the SmackDown brand. PWInsider's MIke Johnson and POST Wrestling's John Pollock reported on Monday that both Mia Yim and Shane Thorne have been moved following the recent break-up of the Retribution faction. The two went by Reckoning and Slapjack during their time with the masked group. Meanwhile, Mustafa Ali is back to working as a singles wrestler while T-Bar and Mace revealed some sort of alliance with MVP last week.

Ali revealed in a recent interview with ComicBook.com that he didn't know he was going to be made the leader of the struggling faction until the day it happened on an episode of Raw. The decision was made after Ali had to undergo a "tryout" to determine if he could play a heel role.

"I found out I was joining Retribution that day, but I had been auditioning, so to speak," Ali said. "Again, man, storytelling, I kind of looked at my career at a snapshot. I made my return. Nothing really happened. I was off for seven months, for no apparent reason to me other than just creative had nothing for me. When I was initially looking at the mirror, I go, 'What is wrong with me? Nothing's wrong with me. Look at me." Again, after seven months, you have to eventually have that look in the mirror and go, 'What am I missing?' I think the thing I was missing was a little bit of edge. I knew I could cut a great promo. But again, within the confines of being a good guy, you're very limited as to what you can say.

"So I presented the idea of doing something," he added. "It wasn't being the leader of Retribution, it was, I met with Vince McMahon and the creative writing team and said, 'I think I'm capable of doing more and this is the route I'd like to go. And it was basically, "Well, you'd have to show us. So I recorded my own promos, my own videos. I had to audition basically to not be a good guy anymore. And if you go back and you watch these WWE Main Event matches I was having before joining Retribution, you would see the small details, the storytelling when I was slowly becoming more aggressive, a little bit more violent, having a little bit more of these heelish tendencies in my matches."