Show Review

So I had to write this article a second time because the first one got deleted or probably yeeted from my G-Drive, but I blame myself for not making a second copy since I’m a very one and done person. I think some things I may have left out in this version, but it’s about as complete as I can make it  in about two hours or so. So Tat, if you’re reading this part, please remind me next time to make a second copy of my articles so that oopsie doesn’t happen again.

Okay, enough breaking the fourth wall, into the article we go.

Y’know I wasn’t planning on watching this show since WrestleMania 36 was supposed to be the only wrestling review I was gonna do until AEW Double or Nothing, but somehow WWE managed to capture my attention with possibly the most interesting WWE PayPerView idea: the Money In the Bank Ladder Match will be happening at WWE Headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut. For anyone who’s unaware, the Money In the Bank match is probably one of the most important matches in the WWE, as the winner of the briefcase that is held up about 15-20 feet high, gets a shot at the world championship, while the ladies get a chance at one of three Women’s Championships in WWE (if the NXT Women’s Championship is included in it) within a year of them holding said briefcase. It’s also very tense as you never know when they’re gonna cash in, and as usual, WWE finds a way to make me go “why aren’t you this creative regularly?” And let’s be honest, it’s been hard as hell to watch WWE at all with the lack of a crowd, while AEW slowly starts building to a crowd, but I won’t deny WWEs prowess of being creative geniuses when their backs are against the wall, even during a global pandemic. 

So without further ado, live in front of a 0 audience at the WWE Performance Center and several people who saw it driving home from work in Stamford, it’s time to review the 2020 edition of Money In the Bank.

Match 1: Jeff Hardy vs Cesaro

Our pre-show match is a really good one, especially since Jeff Hardy was out of action for about 9 months. And it’s quite the clash of generations and wrestling styles as Cesaro is known for being one of the best technical wrestlers in the WWE right now, while we all know, Jeff has put his body, heart and soul on the line in the 20 years he’s been in the business. This was a really good match, and it seems like Jeff had missed a few steps, but recovered really well, and I think the clashing of two styles benefitted both men in this match. Overall, Jeff Hardy wins with his Swanton Bomb in 13:30

Match 2: Fatal 4 Way Tag Team Match for the WWE SmackDown Tag Team Championship

So a lot has actually passed since WrestleMania surprisingly in the tag division. As y’all remember, Miz & Morrison, well, Morrison at least successfully defended the tag titles in a ladder match. Well, the next week, they would lose to The New Day. And here we are now.

So here are the competitors: The New Day, your champions, against Miz & Morrison, Lucha House Party and The Forgotten Sons. Who are they? I don’t know and I legitimately forgot who the actual hell they were. The Uso’s were supposed to be in this match, but unfortunately one of them sustained an injury.

This was a pretty solid match to kick-off the main show with a lot of nice action from beginning to end. Overall, The New Day retains their titles after a hard fought match in 12 minutes.

“Match” 3: Bobby Lashley vs R-Truth

What was supposed to be MVP vs R-Truth turned into an average segment from Monday Night Raw.

It was a squash match, lasted a minute and a half, next match please.

Match 4: Bailey (c) vs Tamina for the WWE SmackDown Women’s Championship

This match wasn’t all there for me. I kept zoning out a lot, and while it was a good match, it just felt kinda run of the mill for me. Overall, Bailey retains her championship in 10:30 from a distraction from Sasha Banks.

Match 5: Braun Strowman (c) vs Bray Wyatt for the WWE Universal Championship

This was a solid match with a solid story. Bray and Braun used to be in The Wyatt Family with then Luke Harper, who is now Brodie Lee in AEW aka The Exalted One, and Erik Rowan, who’s now Erik RedBeard in the independent scene… original. They went their separate ways and now they clash together for a championship, and it was a solid match through and through. Braun seemingly wanted to join forces with Bray once again wearing his black sheep mask, but it was all a ruse, and Braun wins with a running powerslam to retain his title in 11 minutes, but we end to see The Fiend flashing on the screen, signalling that the feud was far from over.

Match 6: Drew MacIntyre (c) vs Seth Rollins for the WWE Championship

I’m just gonna come out and say it, but I do not like Seth’s gimmick. This Monday Night Messiah thing is basically a rip-off of CM Punk’s gimmick when he did the Straight Edge Society thing 11 years ago. I swear to God, if he has a Mask vs Hair match with Rey Mysterio and Seth loses, I’m not watching another Seth Rollins anything until he goes back to being original, instead of being about as unoriginal as a Carlos Mencia joke.

But nonetheless, this was a really damn good match. Both men are pretty much at their physical peaks right now, and it’s a little weird seeing them side by side since Seth looks like a shorter, but more bearded version of Drew. One thing I won’t deny about Seth is that he’s a hell of a wrestler and storyteller, and damn it does he do both well. And Drew is Drew, what more can I say? Overall, Drew hits Seth with a massive Claymore Kick to win and retain in 19:20, with the ending scene of the match being Drew giving a handshake to an absolutely distraught Seth.

Match 7 & 8: Men’s and Women’s Money In the Bank Ladder Match

We’re at the main event, and good god was there a lot of holy shit moments, cameo’s and non-stop entertainment in this entire match. There’s a lot to cover in this one match, so bear with me on this, it’s gonna be a super long one.

On the men’s end where there’s a gym in the HQ, we have Otis, Baron Corbin, Daniel Bryan, AJ Styles, Rey Mysterio and Aleister Black competing for the men’s part of the match.

As for the ladies, we have Carmella, Nia Jax, Shayna Baszler, Lacey Evans, Dana Brooke (why is she still here), and… where’s Asuka? 

Well, Asuka pulled a New Jack and jumped off a balcony onto the other ladies to begin the match on her end and just ran into the elevator to give her a major head start while the others went up the dreaded stairs. On the men’s end, it begins in an old fashioned bar room brawl that’ll make any bar crawling S.O.B. smile, with Corbin doing immediate damage by launching a weight plate at the wall mirror, shattering it and leaving a dent in the wall that’s the size of a basketball. This brawl continues for a little while until they all start to run for the elevators to make it to the top, and all of a sudden: Rey bumps into Brother Love! In a bathroom after he presumably took a dump which makes it a bit weird. It’s always nice to see Bruce Pritchard have a cameo, and in fashion, he washed dem hands. 

Wash your hands folks!

The boys get in the elevator in a heated brawl and while the ladies finally made it to the floor Asuka will have exited from, here comes all the men having an absolute brawl, and then the ladies get into a brawl themselves, and while Asuka tries to sneak away, Shayna spots her and goes on the hunt for her. Aleister then begins to ascend to the roof after the brawl continues, and Otis, man he’s the funniest damn thing on WWE right now. Knowing that it’s still a free for all, and while Daniel is giving Corbin some Yes Kicks, he’s just saying “Yes” while Corbin is getting kicked, and even when Bryan stopped kicking, he still kept saying “Yes” and got a taste of the Yes Kicks. Just, fantastic. He then runs off, aaaaaaaand now we got a nonsensical Doink the Clown cameo. It wasn’t even Doink, it was some random guy they got and painted a clown face on who was also wearing a polo shirt. Who is he and where’s my real Doink? Anyway, this cameo was about as lukewarm as a bottle of Sprite left out on the sun for three hours.

The ladies now clash with the exception of Asuka at the Money In the Bank conference room, and it was a decent part of the brawl, but Jesus Christ Almighty, we need to talk about this moment before I get into a brief rant later in the article. So the brawl assumingly ends when Dana just cracks Nia in the back with a steel chair, but she does the absolute stupidest thing ever, by getting the fake MITB briefcase that was hanging in the damn conference room. What made this worse was that she was actually convinced that she literally won, and then we had probably the worst cameo (effort wise) of Stephanie McMahon telling her that this was the conference room, the real briefcase is up on the roof, and that’s just a prop. How absolutely baffling is it that they literally booked Dana to be an absolute idiot in such an important match like this? I laughed so hard at that, I was coughing up popcorn kernels from when I watched WrestleMania. Steph, it’s nice to see you again, but why the low effort cameo? I know you can do better, you’re a McMahon. Oh yeah, and then Dana gets hit with a portrait from Carmella, who then gets her lights knocked out by Lacey Evans with her finisher, The Women’s Right. I swear to God, that’s her actual move name when she punches the hell out of someone.

AJ is searching for Rey and while looking at big portraits of Rey, Roman Reigns which I am gonna be talking about later on, and his old nemesis, The Undertaker. He then finds a blue lit room with a casket in it, and Aleister just kicks him in and closes the door. Would’ve been sick if Undertaker just sat up from the casket, but hey, it’s a nice little teaser, and Undertaker can do what he wants at this point given he signed a 15 year deal with WWE. Undertaker to AEW in 2035 confirmed.

We now see our God, our walrus, our wonderful New York Jew and the father of ECW, Paul Heyman getting ready to dig in to a nice feast as any big boi from NYC would do, and is unfortunately, and disrespectfully interrupted by both the men and women of the match. With a thunderous might, he casted a plague onto them all, wiping them out in a nanosecond and he went on to eat his feast in peace.

Nah I’m just joking, his ass got caught in a food fight where he took an accidental shot on Otis, but that’s only because Dana, STILL WITH THE PORTRAIT, bumped into the mighty walrus, and his sandwich hit Otis, prompting him to shake with extreme feeling- have I mentioned that I absolutely love Otis? Like he’s literally my damn spirit animal, he’s the best damn thing in this entire company right now. This food fight was intense and hilarious unlike the abysmal movie that is Food Fight where most of the movie has horrible CGI and the director is more horrible at pretending the movie didn’t happen than WWE’s attempt at erasing Roman Reigns from history, more on that later, but it was an entertaining food fight from Rey getting choked out by Rey, then being squished together by Otis AND Nia, a duo I never would’ve expected, and the food fight brawl ends with Nia launching Dana to the vending machine, and powerbombing Carmella through the table. We then get an intense staredown with Nia and Otis while he’s just hamming on a sandwich, and they both go their separate ways. Otis then finds another piece of the cafeteria where there’s nothing but pie, and man, I want me some pie now. But wait, we have another cameo by Johnny Ace himself, the former Executive Vice President of Talent Relations, John Laurinaitis! “People Power!” He said with that iconic smile, but it wasn’t all smiles as he got pied in the face and Otis ran off back on the conquest of the briefcase.

And now, we’ve reached the part where now I’ve got to have my mini rant about Dana Brooke.

A janitor is mopping up the floor like any other, and Asuka is literally screaming at this man in Japanese and broken English asking him where the entrance to the roof is, but the ladies catch up to her and chase after her, slowly of course, and right behind, Dana is just running full sprint, and completely slips and basically knocks herself out silly, and that’s the last of Dana Brooke in this entire match. 

Dana, has admittedly had it rough in the WWE since she debuted with the company back in 2014. She was a very well known addition to the growing women’s division in NXT where she started, but when she was pushed to the main roster in 2016, it was obvious that she was nowhere near ready for the limelight in any way, shape or form. She was still a bit sloppy in the ring, she wasn’t much of a good promo, and she kinda was just another blonde girl in the roster. And I do believe she has a lot of potential, after all, she’s 31 and it’s her prime years, and I think that if she went to NXT, and got a bit more training, she can have the world in her hand, but unfortunately, WWE has booked her to be an absolute idiot who has more misfortunes than Friday the 13th. It’s gotten to the point where if she ever won the Women’s Championship, whichever brand it may be, it’ll feel like Jinder Mahal’s reign as WWE Champion: forced, crap, rushed, overbearing, wasted potential, and everyone would agree that she isn’t a credible champion, just like Jinder when he became the WWE Champion. 

On a lighter note, Shayna gets absolutely demolished by Asuka by getting kicked in the head, taking The Women’s Right from Lacey Evans, and then Nia just launches her into the wall, making it the last we see of Shayna.

Aleister and Daniel were fighting all the way to the top until AJ popped in and took on Daniel himself, which prompted the two of them to have a brawl, into the boss’s office. Yes, they were brawling into Vincent Kennedy McMahon’s office, and when both of them realized it, they were about to shit their pants, especially when the boss stood up. “OUT!” He screamed with the classic thunderous attitude we know of, and they both did, but also by putting back the chairs where they belonged, and Vince, before going back to work, put on some hand sanitizer, and went back to work. Best. Cameo. Ever.

Sanitize dem hands!

They brawled some more after having a brief conversation, Corbin from outta nowhere taking them out, and now it was a race to the roof.

We’ve reached the ending moments of the women’s part of the match as Nia Jax has now caught up with Asuka, and Lacey Evans followed suit. I should’ve mentioned that Carmella getting powerbombed through the table was the last we saw of her. In the end, it was a hefty fight between the three ladies and… Baron Corbin? Yes, Corbin tried to get his briefcase at the same time, but for whatever reason, he tried to prevent Asuka from getting hers for whatever reason, and Asuka knocked him down, and retrieved her first ever, Money In the Bank briefcase. A very well deserving win for the empress of tomorrow.

Now, it’s down to the men’s portion as we see Otis getting ready to climb the ladder, but big boi Otis is too much of a big boi as he literally broke the first runk of the ladder, and he would then be jumped by Corbin. The rest of the guys would then come to the roof and the battle was on, but the battle ended for two people specifically, as Baron Corbin, literally threw Rey Mysterio and Aleister Black off the roof of WWE Headquarters. I honestly couldn’t believe that they actually did this, but the next night on Raw, they said that they landed on a secondary roof and sustained “minor injuries.” I’m pretty sure if I jumped off a six foot ladder onto concrete, I’m gonna have more than “minor injuries.” The match reaches its ultimate, satisfying, unyielding, unbearably edging climax where AJ and Corbin are up on the ladder, both hands are on the briefcase, and outta nowhere, Elias, whacks Corbin with his trusty guitar, and just when you think AJ won, it’s a fumble, and Otis catches it, and he won! Otis is now the winner of the Money In the Bank Ladder Match, by a fumble heard across the world.

But, that wasn’t the ending just yet.

The next night on Monday Night Raw, Becky Lynch, the reigning Raw Women’s Champion, came out with Asuka’s briefcase and it was noticeable that she was extremely emotional. She then said that she can no longer defend her championship anymore, and an apoplectic Asuka came out yelling at Becky in Japanese from the entrance ramp to the ring. Becky then said that the ladies were fighting for way more than just a shot at the title, and then she opened the briefcase, and the Women’s Championship was in there, and she said that they were fighting for that, and said, Asuka is the new champion. I’m not sure if it was a shoot or a work, or even a worked shoot, but Asuka’s reaction to that was of pure confusion and then realization, and if it was a work, then it was a damn good of a work. She then celebrates through ringside and to the announcers table and you can see Becky is in tears, and we still didn’t know what was wrong. She then came back in the ring and said to Asuka and everyone around the world “you go out and be a warrior, because I’m going out to become a mother.” It was at that point that I knew Asuka wasn’t in character mode and this was a genuine reaction not only from her, but from Becky as they embraced in a hug, and I have to admit, I cried a little hearing this reaction, and it’s been a damn long time since I cried watching wrestling, last time being Double or Nothing from AEW last year with Cody vs his brother Dustin Rhodes. If this is the last time we see Becky Lynch in a wrestling ring, I’d be fine with that, as she’s had an impeccable career, and a fantastic two years as the hottest thing in wrestling, and I think if this is the final time, I’d be okay with that.

Money In the Bank 2020 is quite possibly the greatest show WWE has put on in a very long time. While the squash match and the women’s title match were the two low points of the whole show, this show was solid, and it produced possibly the greatest MITB match in the last 5 years. I highly recommend watching this, as I give this show a 4 ½ star rating. It’s the best PayPerView by WWE all year so far, and congratulations to both Becky Lynch and Seth Rollins for their soon to be child.

Money In the Bank 2020 Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ½