Retribution, Chelsea Green and WWE's Biggest Losers of 2020
The year 2020 is almost over, and it's time to assess the past 12 months in WWE.
Many major names enjoyed tremendous years, but we're going to use this article to focus on those who weren't so fortunate.
Continuing our three-part review of 2020 and picking up from All Elite Wrestling's best and worst, let's take a look at some of the biggest losers from WWE before rounding out the series with the biggest winners.
The Mysterio Family and Friends
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Rey Mysterio and his family have gone through a lot this year—almost solely because of Seth Rollins.
The Monday Night Messiah took it upon himself to ram the veteran's eye into steel steps on more than one occasion.
Aleister Black suffered an eye injury caused by Rollins' disciple, Murphy, in July for just standing beside Mysterio. Sadly, The Dutch Destroyer has made little impact in WWE since.
The same goes for Humberto Carrillo. At best these days, he's wrestling on Main Event and doesn't even win half the time.
Dominik scored a big win this year by signing a contract with WWE, but he found out how brutal the job can be when Rollins destroyed him with a kendo stick. Mysterio Jr. has also managed to lose most of his matches and argued almost constantly with his sister, Aalyah.
They may be smiling now that they have accepted Murphy into the family, but 2020 was mostly horrible for the Mysterios.
Mickie James
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After 14 months of inactivity because of a torn ACL and with WWE Creative having nothing in mind for her to do, Mickie James finally returned to action in August.
It's arguable she would have been better off remaining on the sidelines, as her return was a total dud.
She lost her match to Natalya by count-out while more attention was given to Rollins arguing with Samoa Joe on commentary to set up The Monday Night Messiah's segment for later.
Nothing came out of this, either. James simply wrestled a few more weeks as if she were any normal member of the roster rather than a legend who was back in rotation.
On September 14, her match (which she also lost) ended in a botch, and she hasn't been seen since.
James is far too good for that sort of treatment and poor booking, and it's a shame to see she's again on the shelf with no timetable for her return and even less of an assurance she will be booked well when she does come back.
Chelsea Green
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In January, it seemed Chelsea Green had something big in the works when she became the focal point of The Robert Stone Brand.
She even competed in the Royal Rumble later that month and qualified to fight in the NXT Women's Championship No. 1 contender's match at TakeOver: Tampa Bay in April. That event never happened, so she had to wait for something else.
Her fiance, Zack Ryder, was then released.
On May 27, things picked up when she appeared to be gearing up for a partnership with Charlotte Flair after firing Stone. Unfortunately, she wasn't seen again until November 13, when she debuted on SmackDown.
Moments after her entrance, Green suffered another broken wrist, which she previously injured in 2019. This ruined her chances of competing at Survivor Series and put her back on the injured list, where she will be for the coming months.
For all her time in NXT, Green has pretty much done nothing but get injured on two different debuts and started two partnerships that ended almost immediately. That's horrible luck.
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NXT UK
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NXT UK TakeOver: Dublin was set for April 26, and the card was settled on with the build almost entirely complete. Then the pandemic took hold, and the show was put on hold.
It was rescheduled for October but was again cancelled.
In the meantime, NXT UK was shelved indefinitely. No new episodes were taped, meaning once WWE ran out of the taped material, the brand was effectively defunct.
For the majority of the year, NXT UK existed as a clip show featuring the occasional Zoom interview—none of which were entertaining enough to justify watching.
NXT UK returned on September 17, with new episodes filmed at the BT Sport studio. Sadly, all the momentum of previous feuds had been lost and things haven't been the same.
Had Ilja Dragunov vs. Walter taken place in front of fans, it would have even more recognition as one of the best matches of the year. But with NXT UK being mostly ignored even before the pandemic, the brand is now a ghost of its former self.
Retribution
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If WWE tries something and it fails, that's unfortunate. When the company doesn't bother trying and almost actively sabotages an idea, there's no one to blame but the creative team.
Such has been the case with Retribution—a stable that came out of nowhere with no direction or plan in mind, no members and no justification for its name.
A group of masked random people created chaos on Raw and SmackDown before being mocked on Twitter for looking like delinquent teenagers rather than the next incarnation of The Shield.
They promptly started following the rules by only sticking to Raw and not even showing up every week or doing anything particularly impressive, which made it even harder to invest in them.
Eventually, WWE settled on some performers as being the true members of the group. But they were all repackaged given ridiculous names and forced to put on silly masks. The whole thing felt like a joke.
Great performers like Dominik Dijakovic and Mia Yim were now T-Bar and Reckoning, respectively. No one in WWE bothered to research the name Slapjack and its alternative meanings or predicted he would be laughed at for looking like a discount Jason Voorhees.
A slight attempt at saving the group was made by bringing in Mustafa Ali as its leader, but the faction has lost more matches than it has won and continues to be a laughingstock.
This group is beyond saving, and the sooner WWE disbands it and lets each Superstar do their own thing again, the better.
Rhea Ripley
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At the end of 2019, Rhea Ripley was on top of the world. She managed to lead her teams to victory at NXT TakeOver: WarGames and Survivor Series before ending the year by taking the women's title from Shayna Baszler.
Once 2020 hit, things changed dramatically.
For some reason, WWE thought it was a good idea to have her beg Charlotte Flair for a match at WrestleMania 36 and then come up short.
Instead of triumphing over The Queen, Ripley's big moment was a clean loss followed by her tough persona being shattered as she was interviewed and bawled her eyes out because she believed that she had failed badly.
WWE never bothered to make up for this, either. The next thing she did was to take the pin at TakeOver: In Your House to allow Io Shirai to become the new champion.
For months, Ripley had nothing to do. She would pop up here and there to score a win over someone like Aliyah, but none of that mattered. The Australian failed to beat Shirai for the title, struggled against Raquel Gonzalez and her WarGames team lost too.
Ripley is far too good to have had such a bad year, but none of it is her fault. WWE never should have booked her to lose to Flair and surely shouldn't have had zero game plan of how to restore her momentum after that mistake.
Raw Underground
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Whether it was in the works before the pandemic or something conceived on the fly in an attempt to boost ratings, WWE tried something new with Raw Underground, and it proved to be a failure.
A few Superstars were given something to do for several weeks. Guys like Arturo Ruas and Dabba-Kato went from the Performance Center to scoring wins on Raw, which might have led somewhere if WWE had any idea where to go with all this.
No belts were created or prizes determined. It was all quite random and meaningless. Some matches were even announced and never aired.
Eventually, WWE decided to play it safe and not cross-contaminate the rosters by bringing NXT talent ringside for these segments, which killed the whole idea.
Sadly, Superstars like Jessamyn Duke, Marina Shafir, Riddick Moss and others who were finally being used weren't carried over on to the regular three hours of Raw in the ThunderDome and are back to doing nothing.
The only one to come out of this a winner is Omos, but even he just transitioned from guarding a door to standing next to AJ Styles.
Erick Rowan
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Erick Rowan was among the Superstars released on Black Wednesday, but special attention needs to be given to how poorly he was doing even before that.
Early in the year, before the pandemic changed everything, Rowan was carrying around a cage. If anyone looked inside it, they were horrified.
Eventually, the mystery was solved and it turned out to be nothing but a ridiculous-looking fake spider. What was particularly sad was that it didn't seem like WWE intended for this to be a joke and thought it would be cool.
It wasn't. It looked like a toy, and it instantly destroyed Rowan's mystique.
Soon after, Drew McIntyre smashed the cage, killing the spider and putting an end to that terrible gimmick.
Several weeks after that, Rowan was unceremoniously given his pink slip.
You could argue Rowan would have been better off leaving before the spider made its debut, as he would have at least avoided being ridiculed in the days before his release.
Stay tuned for the conclusion of this series Friday, when the more optimistic side of things is examined with the biggest winners of WWE in 2020!
Anthony Mango is the owner of the wrestling website Smark Out Moment and the host of the podcast show Smack Talk on YouTube, iTunes and Stitcher. You can follow him on Facebook and elsewhere for more.
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