Money in the Bank 2022

[King Kamala]

I can't believe snipers were threatening to kill Seth Rollins and they had to move this show indoors. SMDH.

WWE Money in the Bank
July 2nd, 2022
Live from MGM Grand Garden Arena in Paradise, Nevada

Money in the Bank ladder match for a World Championship match contract
Seth Freakin Rollins Vs Drew McIntyre Vs Sheamus Vs Sami Zayn Vs Omos Vs Riddle Vs TBD

Money in the Bank ladder match for a Women's World Championship match contract
Lacey Evans Vs Alexa Bliss Vs Liv Morgan Vs Raquel Rodriguez Vs Asuka Vs Shotzi Vs Becky Lynch

Smackdown Women's Championship match
Ronda Rousey (c) Vs Natalya

RAW Women's Championship match
Bianca Belair (c) Vs Carmella

Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championship match
The Usos (c) Vs The Street Profits

WWE United States Championship match
Theory (c) Vs Bobby Lashley


On one hand, it's nice a Big 5 WWE PPV where 3 out of the 4 top matches are women's matches. On the other hand, of course, it's the PPV that they kind of gave up on after it got downgraded from a stadium to an arena!

 

[BUTT]

Extremely funny that WWE wants to run several stadium shows each year but nobody on their roster has any marquee value so the only way to make the stadium shows seem important by comparison is to make all the arena PPVs into B-shows.

 

[Epic Springs]

They've announced two matches for Summerlsam already which shows you where their priority is now. Hilarious that they want to make MITB a Big 5 show. Not exactly off to a roaring start.

 

[King Kamala]

Weird thing is they had three months to generate some excitement for a stadium show and add a fresh paint of coat, which seems like it should be enough time. Really though they had a month and a half since I think they decided to move from the stadium to the arena around Memorial Day but STILL, you only need a few good weeks of TV to drum up exictement. What they decided to do? Give Roman Reigns the summer off basically and uh, not much else.

Booking huge stadiums without any justification for it is like some early '90s WCW dunderheadedness.

 

[Gert]

It’s also odd that they were running it the same night and same town as a UFC card during Int’l Fight Week. I know its not a total crossover audience, but I bet they’d have a better chance filling up Allegiant Stadium if they would have had this on Sunday.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

Omos in a ladder match hahaa

 

[King Kamala]

99% of the appeal of watching the match/show is seeing just HOW BIG Omos' custom ladder is going to be and crazy bumps other guys are going to do from him gingerly tipping ladders over.

It’s also odd that they were running it the same night and same town as a UFC card during Int’l Fight Week. I know its not a total crossover audience, but I bet they’d have a better chance filling up Allegiant Stadium if they would have had this on Sunday.

They did SummerSlam last year on the same night as Pacquiao's farewell fight but that wasn't a holiday weekend and travel wasn't as much of a shitshow last year as it is now. "A WWE show on the Saturday of 4th of July weekend" seems great on surface but more you think about it, dumber it seems.

What WWE won't admit is AEW has probably severely kneecapped the amount of hardcore fans traveling to shows. No hardcore wrestling fan is going to pick MitB over Forbidden Door last weekend. A mediocre build is better than a non-existent build!

 

[Tino Standard]

And even if you’re purely a WWE fan who is not interested in traveling to an AEW event, SummerSlam (historically a bigger deal) is also a stadium show this year and it’s in the same month.

 

[King Kamala]

Yeah. I don't like them moving SummerSlam to July either. I wonder what's up with that. It's a late August event!


(SummerSlam '97 was on August 2nd though for some reason)

 

[Gary]

I've read spoilers that Liv has been winning matches as of late and is pretty over, which of course means Lacey Evans is winning. Granted, I don't mind her too much, and I'm still pretty sure we don't know if she's a hardcore MAGA type, but she's much more entertaining as a heel IMO.

 

[King Kamala]

I guess Becky wins then cashes in after Ronda beats Nattie to set up Becky Lynch Vs Ronda at SummerSlam 2022.

Although this idea might make too much sense for modern WWE.

 

[Epic Springs]

@HarleyQuinn Liv Morgan won the woman's money in the bank match and cashed in a Ronda later in the night to win the Smackdown Woman's Championship!!!

 

[Tino Standard]

LIV MORGAN HIVE STAND UP!!!!!

 

[HarleyQuinn]

@HarleyQuinn Liv Morgan won the woman's money in the bank match and cashed in a Ronda later in the night to win the Smackdown Woman's Championship!!!

Finally!

 

[King Kamala]

Pedo Austin Theory was added last second and won the men’s match so I guess take the good with the bad.

 

[Tino Standard]

I have an awful feeling that Cody is going to be the one to finally dethrone Reigns at WrestleMania next year, and after a long, grueling match where he barely survives, Theory cashes in on him to end the show.

 

[Valeyard]

Theory's not the worst choice. It doesn't really matter at this point, no one has been built up satisfactorily across the board, and unless he gets straight rolled Roman can't get hurt in any real way. If anything I'm in the weird place of feeling a little bad for Theory since he seems to get the "push someone new wait no we don't mean you" sentiment, and I don't even like him much.

 

[King Kamala]

I’d be fine with the Theory push if he wasn’t accused of aggressively hitting on 13 year olds on Snapchat. I think that’s most people’s issue with him.

 

[Valeyard]

Gets heat bro

 

[King Kamala]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1543395280585998336

Allegations aside, wrestling Twitter really doesn’t like this guy!

 

[Valeyard]

The fuck did Kenny Dykstra do to anyone?

 

[Valeyard]

Dude's just mad so he can tweet mad. Hate those people.

 

[Brocklock]

Theory is kind of on that level to me tbh. He's so vanilla. He's like Sammy Guevara without the talent, agility, it factor, and charisma. I definitely get Kennedy with less charisma vibes from him.

Street Profits vs New Day was fantastic. The near falls were great and the match reminded me of those awesome Usos vs New Day matches from 2017. Dawkins is really improving and is almost as good as Montez. Honestly, one of the best wwe tags in years.

Liv winning was great. Men's MITB was alright. I loved Omos getting super razor edged through the table. Rest of the show was forgettable.

 

[tekcop]

Austin Theory is just a reskin of Alex Riley but shorter.

 

[King Kamala]

The fuck did Kenny Dykstra do to anyone?

If Kenny Dykstra had come along 5 or 6 years later, he would have been a star. Hell he might have been a star in ‘06/‘07 if he didn’t immediately go from Spirit Squad to “I’m a serious dickhead heel”.

 

[Valeyard]

If the Spirit Squad had just been a gang of sadistic fratboy types, ranging from Jefferson D'Arcy to Patrick Bateman in personality, they all would've been monster stars.

 

[King Kamala]

No one remembers but I swear it's true...Spirit Squad kind of started like that and had a lot of potential at the beginning but were quickly ruined by playing DX's straight men.

 

[alkeiper]

Something I really haven’t seen covered. Wwe has an official partnership with DraftKings, a sports betting site. They insert a last minute entrant who wins. I don’t know what kind of procedures or safeguards are in place but this seems like the sort of thing that could go really sour. Not from people betting necessarily, but from either the betting site or someone within wwe fixing the game.

 

[King Kamala]

One of my wrestling group chat friends just pointed out that Theory looks like someone deflated EC3.

 

[RedJed]

On the Draft Kings thought.....is WWE still working with them? I thought that was the whole thing with AEW, in that they scored a huge Draft Kings deal when WWE and them stopped working together?

Anyhow, late as fuck on thoughts, but I think looking back at this show, a few things come to mind.

First, thank jeebus that they did in fact move to a smaller venue for this one, I think the crowd wouldnt have been as nearly hot otherwise.

I thought the Liv stuff was booked almost perfectly.....she wins a MITB match by beating the main draw in Becky for the finish, then cashes in on Rousey, who wasn't fully incapacitated either, so it gave Liv legit credibility to a degree. Normally the cash-ins are done in such a way where the guy or gal doesn't fully get "made" since they cashed in when a talent was fully down and out, or they run-in when they aren't aware, etc. Now will they put her over Ronda a second time? They should and then turn Rousey heel after it.

The Theory stuff is starting to get waaaaay too heavy handed now after this booking move. This reminded me slightly of the Lesnar MITB thing to a degree, and if you are going to do a major surprise entrant like that....make it meaningful and worthwhile, like a surprise debut etc (AEW normally does this much better in their casino ladder matches as an example). This just fell flat and predicted the finish BIGTIME during the entrances. Plus I think its kinda insulting to the other talent, much like the Lesnar deal, that they are all there advertised when the whole plan was to have him enter without any qualifying method....PLUS he loses super clean and dominated by Lashley earlier in the show?