Donovan Dijak looks back on Retribution.
Retribution debuted on the August 3rd, 2020, episode of WWE Raw. The hooded group of individuals caused havoc on Raw and SmackDown, and they were later named as T-Bar (Dijak), Mace (Mason Madden), Slapjack (Shane Haste), Reckoning (Michin), and Retaliation (Mercedes Martinez). Mustafa Ali was eventually revealed as their leader, but the group broke up in 2021. The faction remains one of the most memorable parts of the Thunderdome era, a time when live fans were not permitted to attend WWE shows due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Donovan Dijak was asked whether Retribution could have worked with live fans in attendance.
“That’s a great question. I think it would have been better, because there would have been more production, there would have been more interaction, it would have been clearer that we were bad guys trying to make people angry rather than just what you saw, which was crazy people just kind of screaming at nothing, right? It’s like we're going to take over these screens. It doesn’t translate very well. I know that they broke off me and Mace and put us in a tag team and had us take our masks off. That seemingly was well-received by the audience, even though I was still named T-Bar and he was still named Mace, which by the way, we pitched to not have those names anymore because we didn’t want the stink attached to us. But it was still there, we still had the same music and everything. But even still, we were getting good reactions from the crowd. It just apparently wasn’t Vince’s cup of tea, the tag team, so that got split apart too for whatever reason," Dijak said.
Dijak opened up about his time in Retribution in an interview with Fightful. Click here to see what he had to say.
Dijak previously recalled the positives of the Thunderdome. Check out his comments here.
Click here to see what Dijak had to say about a potential Retribution reunion.
Thanks to Chris Van Vliet and his team for sharing the quotes in this article.
