Mason Madden, FKA Mace in WWE, says Fox squashed plans for Retribution to be a group similar to ANTIFA.
In the summer of 2020, WWE began airing segments featuring a group of masked wrestlers causing destruction, such as tearing down the ring or setting fire to a generator outside the building. The storyline was that they were a group of wrestlers who felt the WWE developmental system was unfair to them.
During a recent interview with Steve Fall, Mace said that the group was originally to be similar to the organization, ANTIFA. However, he says Fox nixed that part of the angle.
Mace said:
As I understand it, we were meant to be ANTIFA. When Fox, because it was on SmackDown, found out that there was an ANTIFA angle on SmackDown, on their Fox program, they said, ‘Hey, stop.’ *laughs*
So, confusion happened. They were like, ‘How do we pivot this?’ Because they had already dedicated a decent amount of time to this angle. And then they gave us supervillian masks and I’m like, ‘Cool.’ I really wanted to be like Power Rangers villians.
Mustafa Ali was later revealed to be the leader of the group, which officially disbanded in March 2021.
He continued:
It never really got back on track. Some people didn’t want to do it and then it just kind of 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.
Mace became a member of Maximum Male Models on the April 15, 2022 edition of SmackDown. He was released from WWE last September.
