Mustafa Ali revealed that he was the SmackDown hacker during a promo segment alongside RETRIBUTION on last night’s season premiere episode of RAW.
As previously reported by Fightful Select (subscription required), the plan as of yesterday morning was to have Ali unveil himself as the SmackDown hacker in an effort to “tie up loose ends”. This will not be a focal point going forward for the leader of RETRIBUTION or the faction as a whole, though Fightful Select also reported this was initially the case when plans were put together to reveal Ali as the leader of the insurgent faction two weeks ago.
The hacker first appeared in the early months of this year, intercepting the broadcast of multiple SmackDown episodes to deliver his message and gather information on SmackDown stars through surveillance. His biggest moment came when he unveiled that Sonya Deville and Dolph Ziggler had hatched a plan to keep Mandy Rose and Otis from getting together, leading to a match between Ziggler and Otis at WrestleMania 36 as well as Deville and Rose’s SummerSlam showdown in August.
They last appeared on WWE TV during the May 8th episode of SmackDown and would remain active on their official Twitter account until May 28th. Mustafa Ali was a heavily speculated name for the role, with Dave Meltzer revealing in the June 22nd edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (subscription required) that Ali was set to be the hacker before the storyline was dropped and was instead set up as the now-leader of RETRIBUTION.
Keep up-to-date with all the fallout from last’s night episode of RAW, as well as the latest WWE news, right here at Inside The Ropes.