This past September, Mace was one of several talents released by WWE in the wake of its acquisition by Endeavor and subsequent merger with UFC into TKO Group Holdings. Mace had been a semi-regular face on-screen as one-half of Maximum Male Models alongside Mansoor and during his wider tenure with the company, was best known for his short-lived run as Raw commentator Dio Maddin as well as being a key member of RETRIBUTION.
From the start of their mere seven-month tenure, RETRIBUTION was mired with issues. From the bizarre names of its members to its confusing wider creative, it felt as though the faction was doomed to fail before it even got started. Now, the former Mace himself has opened up about the faction and what led to its disastrous run.
Speaking to Steve Fall of WrestlingNewsCo, Mason Madden revealed that WWE originally planned to portray the group from a more controversial angle but Fox shut the idea down when they got word of it, causing the group’s direction to be lost. This, on top of some members not being completely on board, caused those behind the scenes to lose faith in the entire idea.
“As I understand it, we were meant to be Antifa,” Madden explained. “When FOX, because it was on SmackDown, found out that there was an Antifa angle on Smackdown on their Fox programme they said, ‘Hey, stop.’ So confusion happened. They were like, ‘How do we pivot this?’, because they had already dedicated a decent amount of time to this angle. Then they gave us supervillain masks and I really wanted to be like Power Rangers villains. Yeah, I wanted us to be [Putty Patrollers]! I was like, ‘We look crazy, but I feel like there’s a vibe for that.’
“But it never really got back on track, some people didn’t want to do it. It just lost steam and they lost interest in it and when they lose interest in it, you don’t win. The only way things work is if you have momentum and we never had momentum at any point.”
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