WWE Money in the Bank 07/18/2021
This year’s two Money in the Bank matches showed the best and worst of WWE.
The pre-show saw Rey Mysterio & Dominic Mysterio fail to defend their Smackdown tag team titles against Jimmy Uso & Jey Uso. The match was strong and the crowd was hot, but it’s hard for me to get past rewarding Jimmy with a championship. WWE must really think The Rock’s coming back for WrestleMania next year considering how little they want to screw with this Roman Reigns Tribal Chief storyline.
Money in the Bank Ladder Match: Asuka vs. Naomi vs. Alexa Bliss vs. Nikki A.S.H. vs. Liv Morgan vs. Zelina Vega vs. Natalya vs. Tamina
I hate this company. There was so much stupid shit in this match. I don’t get it. It’s like some writer at WWE gets off on humiliating their women — this garbage happens every year. Ignore the gimmicked bullshit like Alexa “Fiend” Bliss and Nikki Ay Ess Haitch. There’s a fine line between something being creative and contrived, and WWE so often overshoots its target towards the latter. Like, why were three ladders set up at the end? There was a vacant ladder right under the briefcase for minutes!
The crowd hated this unless Naomi or Asuka were on offense. The former had a nice little run towards the middle of the match with some pretty brutal hardcore spots, all things considered. Natalya and the ever-underrated Tamina were reliable as always. Nikki is a fine winner assuming they actually do something with her, which they haven’t done in her half-decade under employment with WWE. I’m banking on Otis 2.0.
None of this matters in the face of the supernatural Alexa Bliss trash. It just sucks. There is no pretense of this being an athletic contest in any sense when Bliss is out there. The worst part? Bliss has actually undoubtedly improved in the ring over the last year. Her offense is really strong, she’s got the best look in the division, and she’s not afraid to bump around like some members of the roster. If they just let her be a badass, it may take a bit of getting used to, but at least there’s a *chance* of believability that Bliss could be a hard-hitting fighter. There’s absolutely nothing redeemable about this supernatural nonsense, especially now that we’re live in front of fans.
If people try to tell you WWE has the best women’s division(s) in the world, show them this match. (¾*)
RAW Tag Team Championships: AJ Styles & Omos (c) vs. The Viking Raiders
Crowds are fickle, but they also consist of monkey-brained humans who are conditioned to pop for one thing: giant dudes. While Styles worked a beautiful tag match with the Raiders for 90% of this contest’s duration, the crowd could hardly be bothered. But when Omos got involved, this place came alive, dying to see what the big man had in store.
I feel as if people were given a reason to care about the Viking Raiders, this would have been even better. Erik is a fantastic worker relative to his standing on the roster, and Ivar knows how to bring plenty of wacky spectacle. Anyone who says Styles is “overrated” or “washed” is being worked by WWE — don’t be that guy!
Anyway, this match was a ton of fun and I wouldn’t be opposed to returning to this well soon. (That may be in the cards considering the hilarious lack of tag teams on RAW). The key is turning Styles and Omos babyface; who’s gonna boo a legend and a giant working clean? Omos tossing Styles over the top rope into a hurricanrana on the floor was the most babyface thing yet on the show. Trust the crowd, trust your instincts; don’t try to outsmart them by putting people in miscast roles. (***½)
WWE Championship: Bobby Lashley (c) vs. Kofi Kingston
This was a classic example of WWE doing the “right” thing and somehow still completely missing the mark. Yes, Lashley should have won in dominant fashion to set up the clash with Goldberg at SummerSlam. But did we really need an eight-minute squash? Wouldn’t the better decision be to give Kingston even the tiniest bit of a comeback to actually, you know, excite the crowd and provide some semblance of viewer investment in the match?
Even further, the story is all wrong and illustrates how far gone Vince and co. are. Should the endgame for Lashley not be Goldberg or even Brock Lesnar, but Big E? If Kingston and Xavier Woods can’t match Lashley’s power, wouldn’t the best possible story be their powerhouse associate? Lashley has been excellent since becoming champion but he’s still not as good as Lesnar, Reigns, or even McIntyre, meaning he feels like just another heavyweight champion in WWE until one of those guys eventually takes the title away. (*¼)
RAW Women’s Championship: Rhea Ripley (c) vs. Charlotte Flair
I had this to say about Ripley vs. Charlotte from Hell in a Cell last month:
“This match should’ve been a hard-hitting powerhouse battle (because WWE is the only promotion in the world who can put that type of match on) but instead it was your standard back-and-forth WWE PPV match with a middling floor and a very low ceiling.”
Well I would like to thank these two women for reading What a Mark! Reviews because that’s exactly what we got in the rematch. This match was fantastic and managed to get across why (1) Ripley seemed like a can’t-miss prospect just a year ago and (2) why Charlotte stood shoulder to shoulder with superstars like Sasha Banks, Bayley, and Becky Lynch as the Four Horsewomen.
This was like a Drew McIntyre vs. Sheamus match translated to the women’s division. After some early annoyances (loud, incessant “WE WANT BECKY” chants that were summarily met with a middle finger courtesy of Charlotte), these two could have just decided “screw this, who cares, let’s just work a basic match.” Instead, they resolved to work through it, and work through it they did! It was sloppy and clunky but it was also extremely hard-hitting and stiff, more so than you’d expect from a main roster WWE match.
The high spots here were so much fun. Aside from Charlotte’s customary top-rope Orihara moonsault — worth a pop no matter how many times you see it — we got tons of innovative stuff, like Ripley somehow powering through some miscommunication to hit the best vertical suplex all night or Charlotte somehow maneuvering out of the Riptide to turn it into a spike DDT. The finish even gave Ripley an out, with Charlotte resorting to use of the steel steps to tap Ripley out with the Figure 8. WWE could put on awesome matches like this every single PPV, but I cherish them when I get them nonetheless. (****)
Money in the Bank Ladder Match: Drew McIntyre vs. Seth Rollins vs. Kevin Owens vs. Riddle vs. Big E vs. John Morrison vs. King Nakamura vs. Ricochet
Seriously, every two months or so WWE reminds us that they have perhaps the single greatest collection of talent that wrestling has ever seen.
Each and every wrestler in this match was perfect for their role. McIntyre was the top guy powerhouse who dominated whenever he was in there, taken out by (lol) Jinder Mahal to give the other wrestlers a chance to shine. Kevin Owens continued to fucking KILL himself, capped off with an insane powerbomb through a ladder to the floor. Big E was the emotional centerpiece, the guy who the crowd was behind (and the perfect winner). Morrison and especially Ricochet flew all over the place, with the former almost dying and the latter hitting an absolutely beautiful step-up dive to the floor in one of the match’s highlights. Nakamura was the perfect counterpart to Riddle, the true star of the match, who showed some insane innovation and backed up his billing as perhaps one of the industry’s top future stars.
This took the spirit of that perfect NXT TakeOver: New Orleans six-way ladder match and translated it to 2021. It just missed those heights but was thrilling nonetheless, with the added emotional bonus of crowd (and personal) favorite Big E moving one step closer to the biggest prize in wrestling. Big E has had quite a year, breaking away from the greatest tag team in WWE history and losing one of his closest friends in Brodie Lee. I sincerely hope he reaches the top of the mountain.
It’s either this one or Bianca Belair vs. Sasha Banks for WWE match of the year. (****½)
WWE Universal Championship: Roman Reigns (c) vs. Edge
This match went 33 minutes and 7 seconds. The first 15 minutes were absolutely nothing; you could’ve tuned in at the 15-minute mark and still gotten the entire story and all the high spots at the end.
With that out of the way, I actually really enjoyed how this one turned out. They checked off all the heavyweight battle tropes including *two* instances of going through the barricade. Once the ref bump happened and Reigns produced that bit of metal from a steel chair, I actually thought the match captured a bit of the magic behind what made the Reigns/Edge/Daniel Bryan WrestleMania main event so much fun.
Edge simultaneously looked extremely gassed and held his own throughout. Reigns just isn’t the type of performer to elevate a match beyond a certain level; like Cena, he’s always been one to wrestle exactly to the level of his opponent. That quality is why I’m baffled at people perceiving some supposed improvement from Reigns over the past year; it’s easy to put on great matches with Bryan and Cesaro. (***½)
Speaking of Cena, he showed up! What a fun surprise and a hot SummerSlam main event.