Money in the Bank – the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

With the 2024 Money in the Bank PPV less than 2 weeks away I thought it would be fun to look back at what has been 20 years of Money in the Bank. It was first contested at WrestleMania 21, and was held at every WrestleMania until it became it’s own event in 2010. Since then 17 times it’s been cashed in successfully for the man and the women’s briefcase has been used successfully every time since theirs was created in 2017. So how has it gone? I took a look back and have many thoughts.

Let’s do the good news first.

Most effective uses of the briefcase

1. Edge – Edge went from a high midcard, I-C and tag team title guy to a two time WrestleMania main eventer, two time Royal Rumble winner, multi-time World and WWE Champion, and frequent (over 20) pay per view main eventer. There’s no bigger before and after leap than this and it is the epitome of what the Money in the Briefcase is supposed to represent – an opportunity to make yourself a bigger deal than you were before, for the remainder of your career. No one did that like Edge. And he did so well the first time that they called his number to do it again two years later.
2. Seth Rollins – Seth had been in a few main events as part of the Shield but for a long time was looked upon as the third guy in the group, the guy who might get left behind when Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns went on to greater heights. Winning the briefcase and cashing it in during the main event of WrestleMania 31 started him on a course that would make him a grand slam champion, Royal Rumble winner, frequent PPV main eventer and in 2024 a WrestleMania main eventer.
3. Daniel Bryan – Bryan cashed in the briefcase in December of 2011 to win the World Title then went on to win two WWE Championships, two tag team titles, and another World Championship. He also main evented two WrestleManias in 2014 and 2021 while being the main character and antagonist, respectively, in two of the biggest and best stories in WWE history – the Yes Movement and Kofimania. By the time he was done the only thing he hadn’t won was a Royal Rumble.
4. The Miz – There are a lot of similarities between the Miz and Edge in that both had held tag and midcard titles prior to cashing in the briefcase and would go on to do a million other things after. Miz cashed in to win the WWE Championship, defended it successfully in the Main Event of WrestleMania 27, then would go on to win the I-C title several times, another US title, and multiple tag team titles with various partners. He’d also get a second crack at the briefcase in 2021 and win a World Championship, thus becoming a double grand slam champ (winning all the titles more than once). He doesn’t have as many PPV main events as the first three guys and never won a Royal Rumble but beyond that he’s had a career above and beyond 99 percent of the people who’ve spent any time in WWE.
5. Bayley – Bayley started off hot going back to NXT with her great run as Women’s Champion and a RAW Women’s Championship six months after debuting along with 3 women’s match of the year candidates from 2015 to 2017 and a big WrestleMania victory at Mania 33. And then things hit a rough patch that would become a two year lull from Spring 2017 to 2019 with only a women’s tag team title to her name. But then at Money in the Bank 2019 she would cash in the briefcase on Smackdown Women’s Champion Charlotte Flair and jumpstart her career. She would go on to win a second Smackdown Women’s Title, main event the 2019 Survivor Series, win another Women’s Tag Team Title, and in 2024 a Royal Rumble and another Women’s Title.

And now the bad news:

Worst briefcase winners

These are the people who make you wonder why they were even booked to win the stupid thing, or why they even bothered to have one at all that year.

1. Mr. Kennedy (2007) – He won it at WrestleMania 23, and then got injured and had it taken off of him and won by Edge who would cash it in successfully for the second time. Kennedy would soon be gone from WWE never to return. Even if he hadn’t gotten injured in hindsight they should have gone with darn near anyone in that match but him.
2. Otis (2020) – Otis won the briefcase, it was a funny moment and all, and then everyone realized that Otis wasn’t going to be winning anyone’s World Championship so they took it off of him and had the Miz cash in the briefcase on Drew McIntyre instead. It was like they figured since we were all gonna die from COVID anyway they might as well have fun with the match that day. And then enough of us lived to stop and say ‘they’re not really gonna have Otis win the world title, are they?’
3. Damien Sandow (2013) – Sandow kept it for a couple of months, challenged John Cena on a random episode of RAW and promptly lost to Cena clean in the middle of the ring. It was like they had to just bury the blue briefcase that year because they already had plans set for the World Championship through WrestleMania that didn’t involve Sandow. But instead of just having the red briefcase only and finding some wacky way to explain it they did this.
4. Baron Corbin (2017) – Corbin kept it for less than two months, cashed it in on Jinder Mahal, then got rolled up and pinned after he got distracted. Yikes. Rumor has it that he was being punished for reporting the company for having some dodgy injury protocols, but we’ll never know unless someone goes on the record. But even if we dismiss that, having him with the briefcase still made no sense because he was another guy that it was just hard to picture winning the world title in 2017 so this may have been another year to burn it off regardless.
5. Austin Theory (2022) – Held it for a few months, but everyone knew there was no way anyone was going to cash it in on Roman Reigns so it was pointless for anyone to even have it. So after a few comical attempts to cash in on Reigns, Theory cashed it in on US Champion Seth Rollins, and still lost the title match. If there was ever a year to deep six the men’s briefcase this was it.

Honorable mention: Braun Strowman (2018) cashed it in the honorable way and then the match, a Hell in a Cell match mind you, ended in a no contest. Yikes.

Worst successful cash-in winners

These are the people who successfully cashed in the briefcase, but what came afterwards might make you wish they didn’t.

Jack Swagger (2010) – Jack was champ for a short time, and then the whole thing was rendered virtually null and void when they ran the first Money in the Bank PPV a few months later and crowned two new briefcase winners in the same year! Why bother doing the Mania match at all if you were going to do that?

Just Jack? There are some other people who successfully cashed in the briefcase but ultimately didn’t get any permanent advancement out of it, but at least you can see what they were trying to do with them when they got the call.

But that’s not all

There are a few what-ifs. Rob Van Dam used the 2006 briefcase to cash in on John Cena and win the WWE title, but got busted for weed and saw any main event future go up in smoke. Big E had maybe the most feelgood, you-deserve-it cash-in ever but we’ll never see how would have panned out long term due to his career ending neck injury. And there are a few for which the jury is still out. Damien Priest is still in his cash-in title reign as of this writing, and while he did main event one PPV his on air presentation as champion has been left a lot to be desired. On the women’s Iyo Skye is only a few months removed from her cash-in reign, and Liv Morgan has won a second Women’s Championship but went two years without so much as a televised title shot after her cash-in reign ended so it’s hard to say that winning the briefcase was any more than a mixed bag for her at least in the short run. And neither woman so far has moved up the card even while holding the title. We won’t know for another year or two just how much winning the briefcase helped any of them in the long run.

As for what’s the best way to use the briefcase, personally I’m a big believer in certification and verification over attempted elevations. My top 5 were had all already proven that they could perform at a main event level even if they hadn’t been in one yet, and the briefcase was just a way of giving them a pathway there. I think using it to try and convince the audience that someone they don’t believe in really is that guy or gal is hit or miss, mostly misses if you’re talking about getting someone to the main event.

I also think it’s time to take a hard look at whether or not it’s time to press pause on the men’s briefcase if not both. Since 2017 the men’s briefcase has been deep sixed 4 out of 8 times either because of who won it or because it just didn’t fit in with the larger plans. If every other year the best move with the briefcase is to bury it then it really puts it’s need to exist in question. Leaving Priest aside for the moment the last time it used to truly move someone up the card and not just to give them a turn with the belt, or as a pure TV plot device, or to create a singular magic moment was…..Rollins, 10 years ago.

The women’s briefcase has some different issues. The most glaring one is that they can’t even be bothered to let anyone hold it for any real length of time – Sky is the second longest holder at a month and a half, three were cashed in the same night and two more within 24 hours. (On average since the women’s briefcase was created the women keep it for a month and a half while the men go for four months.) But that’s not all. With the exception of Bayley it’s hard to pinpoint anyone for which it was used to move them up the card (and even with her, it was a resurgence and not a promotion from the bottom). To create a singular magic moment? Sure. To create a temporary obstacle for the protagonists? Sure. To get the belt off of one of the top women without beating them clean? Sure. As a stopgap measure? Yes. But to move them up permanently? Not really. Here’s a stat for you to back me up: since it’s inception there have been as many PPV main events for the women’s tag team titles (one) as there have been by someone who’d won the women’s briefcase. If you ask me the women’s division would be better served with a midcard title than the briefcase: it would allow them to do all the things they currently use the briefcase for and might even serve as a better bridge to higher ground than being thrust into a world title reign that risks making them look like a substitute teacher.

For me the big question is: why does it exist?  Is primarily it to move people up, or to make some moments and add some plot twists to what we’re watching?  How you answer that says a lot.

So here’s to 20 years of Money in the Bank, let’s see where it goes from here.