WWE managed to do something they have become experts in on Monday Night RAW...

There have been times where there have been some rather encouraging things to have been produced, however they have then come to a crashing halt just when they appear to have been picking up the momentum to become one of the best things in the business.

Nexus

Let's take the Nexus as an example. The group ran riot in 2010 when they completely destroyed Monday Night RAW with their antics in the final event.

Led by Wade Barrett, Daniel Bryan, Darren Young, Skip Sheffield, Michael Tarver, Justin Gabriel, Heath Slater and David Otunga stunned everyone when they appeared and left destruction in their path.

The group looked to be heading in a great direction as one of the best factions to have been formed in a number of years, however poor booking from the creatives employed by the WWE saw this group fail to become the force so many viewers would have expected them to have become.

Although they managed to last around 14 months since their inception following the first series of NXT, the group continued to change and see numerous members leave or join, which just continued to break the momentum the Nexus could get.

Now, it appears WWE's latest faction that could have had the same impact as The Nexus a decade later has suffered the same fate and has essentially been squashed and buried just before they could get started.

Indeed, Mustafa Ali was revealed to be the leader of RETRIBUTION just a couple of weeks ago, which was a huge twist and a storyline many could get behind. It gave the audience a chance to witness a new side to the Superstar, whilst it also provided the opportunity to breathe a fresh sense of life into his character.

Thus, kicking off Monday Night RAW could have been great, if it were not to essentially be in a match in which they were squashed, despite later revealing that Ali was the hacker on SmackDown.

RETRIBUTION

RETRIBUTION decided to pick a fight with The Fiend, but would then go on to lose the eight-man tag team match as they were cleanly beaten in a match by The Hurt Business. T-BAR was beaten by Bobby Lashley via his Hurt Lock submission hold.

Whilst being beaten on their RAW debut cleanly would have been disappointing to begin with, the fact that Ali and the whole stable were beaten unceremoniously by The Fiend singlehandedly just put the final nail in RETRIBUTION's coffin.

If the WWE were trying to book RETRIBUTION as a heel-stable, then they ultimately failed. There is no way this group will have any credibility in what they are trying to achieve and the storylines they are portraying after being beaten with such ease by an established set of Superstars.

If they had been put over by their opponents, then perhaps we would have been able to explore this group and go on the journey with them. However, WWE did what they have done for so many years.

RETRIBUTION

The company’s tendencies to pull the rug out from up-and-coming stars once again manifested itself in RETRIBUTION. A group of fresh faces getting sacrificed at the expense of established stars has been a feature of WWE writing for far too long now, so perhaps we should not have been surprised to have seen it happen.

Believed to have been considered to headline Survivor Series, the way that the WWE have basically squashed RETRIBUTION on their first showing on Monday Night RAW makes it incredibly difficult to see them have a place on the November show as a headline main event act.