Up until two weeks ago, Monday Night Raw, RETRIBUTION was the worst thing running in WWE, which begs the question: why is it being talked about?
It's simple. The story has the past being remembered, and it makes the story more intriguing. In 2019, when the wrestling world went crazy for "Kofi-Mania," that wasn't the original plan. In fact, a wrestler by the name of Mustafa Ali was receiving a "push," (a roster member suddenly being looked at as a too guy/girl, and winning matches, making them a credible character), and was even rumored to be getting a world championship match. That was until an injury occurred, and Ali was removed from his push, and the wrestling world, and more importantly, the WWE opened up for Kofi Kingston to win the world championship at Wrestlemania, making him the first African-American to win the world title and run with it for about 7 months, until the launch of Smackdown on FOX, when Brock Lesnar defeated Kofi in a "blink-and-you-miss-it" main event.
Well, regardless of Lesnar's winning the title from Kofi, Ali never seemed to get back to that level, and recently was revealed to be the mouthpiece and leader of a new faction in WWE - Retribution. Retribution was originally created with the idea of disrupting WWE and adding chaos to the stories, and shortly thereafter, they were chained down to just being part of the show, and it wasn't until they added Ali as a mouthpiece that they were given some story to try to rebuild their credibility.
Last week, Kofi Kingston was said to have a broken jaw, and unable to perform. The issue with this is typical, if you are in a tag team and you get injured, your partner is jobbed (becomes a loser in all matches until the team is full again) without a story.
This is a little different. Kofi's partner, Xavier Woods, who recently himself returned from a career-threatening injury, was suddenly thrown into a series of matches with Retribution members and didn't look like there was a motive behind it, other than being the healthy loser due to his partner being sidelined. Mustafa Ali spoke about it and laid out his frustration.
He let the viewers know that part of his reason to become the leader of Retribution and lead this assault on Kofi's partner was very personal. He brought up two years ago, he let the watcher know he hadn't forgotten, even though the wrestling world did.
Someone is paying attention to long term booking in some stories in WWE, and that's when it shows viewers it has their best interests in mind.
These series of events are building up to a Kofi, when healthy, versus Ali match, and if they continue to build the way they are, the storyline may be just as exciting as the match inside the ring.
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