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Donovan Dijak has lifted the lid on what it was like in Retribution in the WWE.
The former WWE star recently spoke with Bill Pritchard of WrestleZone, who said the stable was met with a “polarizing” reaction. Dijak said that was being kind, but fans not liking Retribution was not a reflection of the group’s efforts. Dijak said no one wanted Retribution to succeed more than them, pointing out several ways they tried to stand out.
“I think a lot of people misconstrue what I say about my opinions about Retribution and think, oh, he didn’t care. He wasn’t invested. I’ll say this; as many times as I possibly can and I’ll say it about everybody in the group. Nobody was more invested in Retribution than we were. We desperately wanted to make that work; I shaved my head, I had contact lenses. I figured out different ways to paint my face,” Donovan Dijak said.
“I thought of a new voice, I was trying to change my teeth. I’d spent thousands of dollars on gear. Again, it looked plain and whatever. I was burning it, I was doing these things. We were adding patches. Brennan, who was Mace, was designing the logo. We were pitching things constantly about here’s our motivation. Nobody wanted to make this work more than us. We dove head-first into it and we gave it a thousand percent. And we were just pushed back upon a lot. We were handcuffed a ton when it came to Retribution.”
Dijak Knew Retribution Was A Silly Gimmick
Dijak said everyone in the group was not blind to the gimmick being a silly idea, but they did the best they could with what they had. He knew “T-Bar” was a Vince McMahon idea, so he couldn’t just go to the former WWE Chairman and criticize the name. Instead, he tried to find a way to make it work as it was presented to them.
“Even though it sounds terrible, I can make… What if we do this? What if I am a maniac?’ You know? And we knew that if we were allowed to, we could make this good. The reality is, we weren’t really allowed to. So from that aspect… I don’t want the misconception, because I know there is a misconception that I thought Retribution was stupid so we just threw our hands in the air and gave up. We did not. We did the exact opposite.”
On Re-Debuting In NXT As Dijak
Retribution was finally shelved (or put out of its misery, depending on who you ask) after the team disbanded at Fastlane in March 2021. Dijak was repackaged and re-debuted in NXT the following year, and he noted how important it was to acknowledge the past and move on.
“When I re-debuted in NXT as Dijak, [that was a] big, big, piece of it. A big motivation behind that character was [to] acknowledge that I was T-Bar, explain that we’ve moved on, and here’s the motivation and the reason why the making up the penance part of it and that reflected in-ring as well. I wanted just there to be a complete re-invention with an acknowledgement of what happened but to say this is what’s happening moving forward and here’s the new presentation. And I think we did that successfully. I think we did that very successfully in NXT. Again, there’s always going to be rumblings.”
Dijak still gets “T-Bar” chants despite moving on from WWE, but he sees it as a good thing.
“It’s the same as chanting ‘Let’s go Cena, Cena sucks, right?’ They are all chanting Cena sucks, but they all know who he is and they are all there for a reason. So, when the whole crowd mocks at me and chants T-Bar at York Hall in London, I’m thrilled. ‘Okay great. They all hate me because I was T-Bar. Fine. That’s fair.’ I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t right? That is a good thing. That is good heat. Now they want to see me get beat up because I was in Retribution. Whatever. And if they are having fun making fun of me, fine. They pay money to have fun.”
Watch our full interview with Donovan Dijak below:
