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Ricochet has had a very rough go of it on Raw ever since he was squashed by Brock Lesnar in a WWE championship match one year ago.
He was teaming up with Cedric Alexander for a while in the middle of 2020, but Cedric eventually had a change of heart and joined The Hurt Business. Things have worked out very well for Cedric ever since he made that career-changing decision; he is currently one half of the Raw tag team champions. Ricochet, on the other hand, had multiple chances to join MVP’s stable, but he refused the invitation. This led to Ricochet getting beat up by The Hurt Business quite often.
Towards the end of 2020, Mustafa Ali then offered Ricochet multiple choices to join RETRIBUTION. Ricochet once again refused to join a group. The angle became more intriguing when self-doubt began to creep into Ricochet’s thoughts, but WWE quickly moved on from the story after every member of the faction beat Ricochet on Raw.
On the one hand, it’s understandable why Ricochet wouldn’t want to join RETRIBUTION. Outside of Mustafa Ali, it’s hard to take anybody in that group seriously. Mercedes Martinez even acknowledged the sinking ship and voluntarily left the group. I do love me some SLAPJACK, but you know, it’s just hard to fathom how Dominik Dijakovic is left doing his best work on Twitter instead of in the ring.
Yet even with the knowledge that RETRIBUTION was always doomed and remains doomed, what has Ricochet accomplished since moving away from them? Outside of a Royal Rumble appearance (that he failed to qualify for) where he existed solely to get thrown out by Kane, Ricochet has spent the last three weeks of television on Main Event instead of Raw. You can catch him there fighting against regular 24/7 title chaser Humberto Carrillo this week.
It’s still amazing to me that WWE can’t find anything for Ricochet to do on Raw despite the show being three hours long. Maybe next time he should turn to the dark side and join up with whatever heel group is pursuing his services, because sticking to his guns is getting him nowhere fast.