Money in the Bank (July 18, 2021)
Results & Afterthoughts

Money in the Bank ladder match for a women's championship match contract

Nikki A.S.H. defeated Alexa Bliss, Asuka, Liv Morgan, Naomi, Natalya, Tamina, and Zelina Vega

I was pleasantly surprised at the reactions for Nikki ASH, Liv Morgan, and Naomi in this match - moreso with the reactions for the latter two. Liv Morgan fell off the top of one of the ladders and immediately grabbed her knee and from that moment right there, I was extremely nervous for the ladies for the rest of the match. I couldn't get too invested into it as I kept thinking someone was going to get hurt or already was hurt. To my surprise, Liv Morgan was fine (to our knowledge) after this match. She's one hell of a great seller then in that case. Her and Naomi had a lot of great spots in this match - easily the two MVPs in this match, along with Nattie who was here simply to be the ring general to lead the ladies in the right direction to keep the parts moving.

They just had to inject that stupidity with Alexa Bliss in here where she tried to hypnotize Zelina Vega and it actually worked until they were both knocked off the top of the ladder. I was glad to see that Bliss was "buried" literally underneath a pile of ladders by all of the women left in this match. I thought the finish to this match was a complete buzzkill though. Nikki ASH just raced up the ladder while everyone else was preoccupied fighting on the other ladders and snatched it up from underneath their noses. Talk about a complete buzzkill.

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy for Nikki Cross finding success with this superhero gimmick as it's obviously more marketable than her wannabe Daffney gimmick that she's been hanging on since leaving the SAniTy faction.

As of this posting (6/22/21), Nikki has cashed in the MITB briefcase on Charlotte Flair the following night on Monday Night RAW after Rhea Ripley laid her out in the main event. Once again, good for her. I just want to see how long can Nikki ride this gimmick for before Vince or live audiences get tired of it.

Tag Team match for the WWE Raw Tag Team Championship

AJ Styles and Omos (c) defeated The Viking Raiders (Erik and Ivar) by pinfall

I'm still not keen onto this idea of having AJ Styles team up with that big Omos dude, but I can't stand what WWE has done to my boys from War Machine with this Viking Raiders gimmick. To their credit though, this match wasn't bad at all. We saw flashes of War Machine throughout this match and I swear if WWE would just drop the Viking Raiders gimmick for these guys and have them wrecking teams like they did back in Ring of Honor, maybe WWE could finally pull their tag team divisions off of the life support they have been stuck in for years now.

Omos has promise, but this on the job training on weekly TV and PPVs ain't cutting it. They should be sending this dude back to the Performance Center ASAP if they see something in him if they want to make him into a megastar. Pushing him now when he's clearly not ready for the position is going hurt him in the long run.

Singles match for the WWE Championship

Bobby Lashley (c) (with MVP) defeated Kofi Kingston by technical submission

People got mad when I said that I didn't have an ounce of confidence in Kofi winning anything here and I was right. Lashley straight up destroyed him - like he should have. WWE has spent the past year or more establishing Lashley as a wrecking machine. He beat the dude who beat Brock Lesnar - Drew McIntyre on multiple occasions, but he's going to lose to the guy who lost to Brock Lesnar in less than a minute? Hell nah, brah.

This was wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Thanks for comin', Kofi.

As of this posting (6/22/21), Lashley held an open challenge on RAW the following night, where Keith Lee returned only to lose in dominating fashion as well. This set the stage for Goldberg to make his return to WWE and lay stake to claim that "He's Next!". How about no? We saw Goldberg challenge Drew at the Rumble earlier this year and lost clean. Why is he getting another title shot? Are we supposed to be happy that he's the second place consolation prize since they couldn't sway Brock Lesnar back for an easy payday? I'm at the point where I don't mind them bringing Goldberg back, but I don't want to see him challenging for any of the World titles.

Why couldn't they setup that Goldberg vs. Riddle match for Summerslam if they want to fill that dream match quota for this year.

Singles match for the WWE Raw Women's Championship

Charlotte Flair defeated Rhea Ripley (c) by submission

From the moment that this match started, there were tons of chants for "We Want Becky!" since I'm sure everyone had seen the tweets going around of Becky Lynch training in town. This was censored during the live broadcast with a black screen but Charlotte Flaid instantly flipped off the crowd in response. Those chants would have been enough to shake the nerves of anyone else, but that merely put a chip on Charlotte and Rhea's shoulders to make their match a tough act to follow. I dare say that this was the best pure wrestling match on this entire card.

I didn't doubt Charlotte wasn't winning this, but they definitely had me going with a lot of near-falls here, especially with that Natural Selection off of that top rope. I can't leave Rhea out of the conversation either as she had just an impressive showing as Charlotte did with a display of power in the form of a Deadlift Vertical Suplex, bringing Charlotte off the ground out of a wheelbarrow position and muscling her up overhead. Jesus Christ that was goddamn impressive.

Their previous PPV match ended in the result of a DQ so it was rather puzzling that Charlotte didn't suffer the same fate here when she resorted to using the steel steps. She trapped Rhea's knee between the steps and the corner post and began kicking the steel steps repeatedly before releasing Rhea and applying the Figure 8 for the win. A little consistency would have been ended this match in a DQ as well, but let's be honest here, did anyone really think that Charlotte wasn't going to pick up the title in this feud at some point or another? The attack on the knee merely gave Rhea Ripley an excuse to justify demanding a rematch since WWE apparently did away with the automatic rematches for the former champion. That decision didn't "ruin" the match for me, but I can see why people had gripes concerning that decision so I wanted to point it out.

Money in the Bank ladder match for a world championship match contract

Big E defeated Drew McIntyre, John Morrison, Kevin Owens, King Nakamura, Ricochet, Riddle, and Seth Rollins

This was the point in the show where everyone watching on the Peacock streaming app (myself included) started having technical difficulties. I'm surprised there weren't reports of people having seizures from the flashing images and distorted feeds going in and out. The irony of the matter was that the people who were watching the show internationally on the WWE Network (since the countries outside of America haven't made the switch to Peacock) didn't have any issues at all, so by the time the feed stabilized, apparently someone in the back switched everyone's feeds over to the WWE Network feed. I keep telling people that NBC Universal shouldn't have never made WWE shut down the WWE Network; instead, offer a gateway portal for existing WWE Network subscribers and allowed all of the content to stay right were it was originally. That way we could have avoided all of these hiccups upon transfer. You would think that the folks running Peacock behind the scenes would have this stuff ironed out by now.

Out of the two Money in the Bank matches, the men EASILY stole the show over the women in that regard. This match shined as it played to everyone's strengths and kept the excitement going from start to finish. I didn't catch it myself, but there's reports of Big E possibly getting hurt off the shoulder block/suicide dive he does out of the ring early into this match. The guy has been playing with fire from all of the years that he has been throwing that match out there in every other one of his matches now. That move should have been saved for rare, special occasions. He can't be too hurt to say that he was able to hit his finish, climb up the ladder, and won the match later on, so let's all hope that doesn't ruin whatever plans that are in store for him down the road with the MITB briefcase.

The stupidest spot in this match to me was Rollins doing his running release powerbomb (Buckle Bomb) on Kevin Owens over the top rope and onto the ladder that was set up as a bridge between the ring and the commentary table. That ladder instantly snapped in half when he hit it and he smacked the back of his head on the floor. That didn't look fun at all and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that he pitched that spot himself.

Even though I don't much care for the guy, I smiled seeing Riddle hit multiple RKOs on the opposition to make his tag team partner proud. I could only applaud seeing Ricochet do Ricochet things with the same level of athleticism and agility that made people take notes of him before he came to WWE in the first place. Too bad this company is never going to do much with him outside of a certain level since his promos are complete shit.

Singles match for the WWE Universal Championship

Roman Reigns (c) (with Paul Heyman) defeated Edge by pinfall

I'm going to have to be honest about this match. As much as I was glad that Roman and Edge were finally getting their one-on-one match that was "robbed" from Edge at WrestleMania by the inclusion of Daniel Bryan. Going into this match, I wasn't enamored with the idea of anyone - let alone Edge - to beat Roman Reigns. With the information already being out there that John Cena was a lock for Summerslam next month, I was convinced that Roman Reigns wasn't losing here anyway. Edge and Roman didn't do anything wrong here - it's just that this match (as good as it was as a back and forth affair) dragged on and on a lot more than it needed to. That was to it's own detriment. I understood during the Thunderdome era that they needed to make these matches slow and methodical to kill time and add more tension and drama to how far gone Roman has gone with this heel persona. Now that they are back in front of live fans, that isn't necessary anymore. We're not in the Tokyo Dome where 30-60+ minute main events are the norm. It's a Sunday night and some people (me included) have work in the morning - wrap this shit up.

The Usos got involved at the first chance of danger looking to come over Roman and endanger his title reign continuing, but the Mysterios fought them off instantly. Roman's saving grace didn't come from the Usos, but from Seth Rollins. They are obviously setting up a Rollins and Edge match for Summerslam, so it's like whatever for me, but it still comes off as a lackluster finish to a decent match. I'm just glad we got this out of the way for we can focus on Roman's next challenger... who just happened to show up before this PPV came to a close.

JOHN CENA made his WWE return tonight at the end of this PPV after Rollins and Edge fought off to the back. I really hope they aren't teasing Rollins versus Roman for WrestleMania next year as that would bore me to tears in all honesty to see the Shield boys feuding again, especially if Rollins is the babyface this time around.

The original promotional graphic for this PPV until Bianca Belair was off the card altogether.

This match between Bianca Belair and Bayley was cancelled after Bayley suffered a torn ACL injury that will put her out for nine months. As a result, Bianca was pulled from having a title defense on this card. She set to defend the title against Carmella on following week's episode of SmackDown on FOX.