“She may have as diverse an array of moves that she can tap into as anybody on this roster” – Peter Rosenberg on Tamina
Money in the Bank’s Kickoff Show was the usual black hole of banter, with Scott Stanford swapped for The Coach.
Newcomer Alyse Ashton did a fine job walking us through WWE HQ, I thought.
0. Jeff Hardy vs. Cesaro
A safe, reliable Jeff Hardy match with nobody in the audience to react to him. *3/4
1. Fatal 4-Way Match – SmackDown Tag Team Title: The New Day [c] vs. Lucha House Party vs. The Miz & John Morrison vs. The Forgotten Sons
John Morrison always has fun working with Lucha guys, like he taps them on the shoulder early in the day and says LET’S TRY STUFF! Otherwise, I’ve seen this tag match a bunch of times and it didn’t really stand out before – here it is in Fatal 4-Way format. **1/2
2. R-Truth vs. Bobby Lashley
They’re just killing time, but the problem is they were killing time before nobody was around to watch it. So this is extra killing time. MVP got involved at some point. DUD
3. SmackDown Women’s Title: Bayley [c] vs. Tamina
Bayley provided an admirable performance but this was never going to be good and it was not good. *1/4
4. WWE Universal Title: Braun Strowman [c] vs. Bray Wyatt
Felt like 1990 AWA or something, the end of a territory. The match went by pretty quick, but was so useless it made me wonder if anyone involved has any skill at this. Babyface Champ Braun Strowman seemed like the best possible idea a few years ago, but without all the usual smoke and mirrors it’s got zero spark. Bray Wyatt confounds me, a guy you know is at least aware of old school wrestling but ends up the most boring modern wrestling guy there is. Why not a trademark bump or something? *
5. WWE Title: Drew McIntyre [c] vs. Seth Rollins
HEY THERE! A LEGITIMATELY GOOD MATCH! This worked on a lot of levels: McIntyre and Rollins have good chemistry, they ran a good old-fashioned competitive championship match, they added in some quirks like McIntyre overpowering Rollins and kicking out at one on stuff, and it didn’t seem like the lack of crowd held them back. They looked ahead and had their kickass match. I never personally bought Rollins winning this, but they managed a hot finish. The FutureShock DDT near fall and McIntyre’s core power top rope Spider German suplex were both highlights. A serious ****.
6. Money in the Bank: Daniel Bryan vs. Rey Mysterio vs. Aleister Black vs. Otis vs. AJ Styles vs. King Corbin and Asuka vs. Carmella vs. Dana Brooke vs. Lacey Evans vs. Shayna Baszler vs. Nia Jax
For a match that was twelve wrestlers having two simultaneous brawls throughout WWE’s HQ in order to get to the roof and climb a ladder to obtain the Money in the Bank briefcase, I thought this was as good as can be. WWE’s booking can be so overly complicated sometimes that a mere wrestling ring cannot fit it – we need soundtracks, drones, and food fights. Maybe not the last one.
The key is the formula needs to be broke for any of this to be fun again – I think that can probably be accomplished by just regular wrestling, but maybe not the type of wrestling that WWE seems insistent on running. When they get to have fun, it usually ends up actually fun.
There were a lot of great moments here that were probably a lot easier on the body than a ladder bump. The entrances alone were money, King Corbin bellowing “Bow down, BOYS!” as he waltzed into the gym in full costume. Dana Brooke still did her aerial cartwheel pose, even though it was in front of an elevator on a linoleum floor. Daniel Bryan asked if everybody was ready for a fight then laughed.
The Brother Love and Paul Heyman cameos weren’t much fun, but Rey Mysterio doing spots off of exercise machines, everybody running through hallways, Otis YES’ing along for Bryan’s kicks, and the Vince McMahon cameo were all just fantastic.
And yes, Rey Mysterio and Aleister Black both did get thrown off the roof.
Asuka’s win felt earned, while Otis’ at some point felt like the only plausible option. ***1/2
Happy Thoughts: The undercard was worse than WWE TV, but they closed this strong and pulled off something vaguely memorable. Not much is clicking, but for two-and-a-half hours (!) I had a good time. 5/10
