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Wrestling / Money in the Bank

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Money in the Bank is a WWE pay-per-view which made its debut in 2010. It is based on the Money in the Bank ladder match (which debuted at WrestleMania XXI) where several wrestlers battle to retrieve the Money in the Bank briefcase for a future championship match. Since October 2021, WWE considers Money in the Bank one of its "five annual tentpoles" alongside the classic "Big Four" events (Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series), thus elevating it to major event status and establishing the "Big Five".

The gimmick is that the holder of the briefcase may choose to start the match at any time within the next year. This rule is frequently abused to start a championship match immediately after the current champion has already defended their belt against someone else, and is still tired out from that match. As such, Money in the Bank cash-ins have a higher-than-average chance of resulting in a new champion.

     Winners 
The first Money in the Bank match was held at WrestleMania 21, and continued yearly until WrestleMania 26. The winner could cash in their briefcase for a shot at either the WWE Championship or the World Heavyweight Championship.

Beginning in the summer of 2010, the match was held at its own PPV. Between 2010 and 2013 there were two separate matches, one for the WWE Championship, the other for the World Heavyweight Championship. Beginning in 2014, there was only one ladder match note .

In 2017, Money in the Bank was a SmackDown Live exclusive PPV, where it was announced that the first ever Women's Money in the Bank match would take place.

  • 2017: Baron Corbin and Carmella
    • Corbin cashed in on Jinder Mahal, but failed to win the WWE Championship. Carmella was later stripped of her briefcase by Daniel Bryan due to interference by James Ellsworth, but won it again in a rematch on the June 27th, 2017 episode of SmackDown Live. She cashed in on Charlotte Flair at the SmackDown Live! after WrestleMania 34 to capture the SmackDown Women's title.

In 2018, WWE dropped the concept of brand-exclusive PPVs, and Money in the Bank was once again dual-branded.

  • 2018: Braun Strowman and Alexa Bliss
    • Bliss cashed in on Nia Jax on the same night to capture the Raw Women's title. Strowman announced his intention to make an official cash-in match against Roman Reigns at Hell in a Cell 2018 for the Universal Championship, but the match ended in no-contest due to Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman's interference.
  • 2019: Brock Lesnar and Bayley
    • Bayley cashed in on Charlotte Flair on the same night to capture the SmackDown Women's title. Lesnar cashed in on Seth Rollins at Extreme Rules 2019 to capture the WWE Universal Championship title.
  • 2020: Otis and Asuka
    • On the Raw following the PPV, Becky Lynch revealed that inside the women's briefcase was actually the Raw Women's Championship, which she was relinquishing due to her pregnancy. Otis lost his briefcase to The Miz at Hell in a Cell 2020, who cashed in during WWE Champion Drew McIntyre's match against AJ Styles at TLC. He failed to win the title, but got the briefcase back on the December 28th episode of Raw after invoking Loophole Abuse.note  Successfully cashed in at 2021 Elimination Chamber to win his second WWE title after the latter was attacked by Bobby Lashley.
  • 2021: Nikki A.S.H and Big E
    • Nikki came out the night after she won the briefcase and cashed in on Charlotte Flair after she had retained the title via disqualification in a rematch against Rhea Ripley. Big E cashed in on Bobby Lashley on the September 13, 2021 edition of Raw and successfully won the WWE Championship.
  • 2022: Liv Morgan and Theory
    • Liv Morgan cashed in on Ronda Rousey on the same night to capture the SmackDown Women's title. Austin Theory would cash in on the United States champion Seth "Freakin'" Rollins on the November 7 episode of Raw. This is the first time that the holder cashed in on outside the world titles and was one of the men who failed to cash in.
  • 2023: Damian Priest and Iyo Sky

"Tropes in the Bank":

  • All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The 2020 edition of the eponymous match was held in WWE HQ in Connecticut. An interesting variant in that, instead of the usual case of the protagonists' HQ being raided by the enemy, it was the WWE wrestlers raiding their own company's HQ.
  • The Artifact: Even after the first Brand Extension has ended, allowing every wrestler to compete on both Raw and Smackdown, the briefcases still had different colors—between 2011 and 2013 the red briefcase represented the WWE Championship (which was on Raw when the brand-split ended), while the blue represented the World Heavyweight title (which was on SmackDown). With the unification of both titles into the WWE World Heavyweight title, the briefcase became gold.
  • Artifact of Doom: When it comes down to it, the Money in the Bank briefcase could qualify as this, as nearly everyone who gets it uses it to cheat and becomes a heel in the process.
  • The Bad Guy Wins:
    • 2010: The Miz won the Raw Money in the Bank ladder match. Kane was still a face when he won the SmackDown ladder match although he would turn heel later that night by cashing in on World Heavyweight Champion Rey Mysterio.
    • 2011: CM Punk won the WWE Championship and jumped ship. (Of course, in that scenario Punk was a designated "Bad Guy" at best, since he was wildly cheered on TV during the lead-up to the match, and Money in the Bank 2011 took place in his hometown of Chicago.) Alberto Del Rio won the Raw Money in the Bank ladder match. Christian won the World Heavyweight Title from Randy Orton after the latter got himself disqualified in a match that allowed the title to change hands in that manner (although he too, like Punk, was a designated heel at best). Daniel Bryan was a face when he won the Smackdown ladder match, but turned heel not long after his cash-in.
    • 2012: Dolph Ziggler won the World Heavyweight Champion Money in the Bank ladder match.
    • 2013: Damien Sandow won the World Heavyweight Champion Money in the Bank ladder match. WWE Championship MitB ladder match winner Randy Orton, like Kane and Bryan before him, was a face briefcase winner who became a heel champion.
    • 2014: Seth Rollins won the WWE World Heavyweight Champion Money in the Bank ladder match.
    • 2015: Sheamus and Seth Rollins won the ladder match. Sheamus won the WWE World Heavyweight Champion Money in the Bank while Rollins won and retained the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.
    • 2016: AJ Styles defeated John Cena in a singles match with the help of Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson. Rollins defeated Roman Reigns clean in a singles match for WWE World Heavyweight Championship (although he would lose it to Dean Ambrose minutes later). Once again, these are both designated heel victories at best.
    • 2017: Baron Corbin won the Men's Money in the Bank ladder match, and Carmella won the first and second Women's Money in the Bank ladder matches with James Ellsworth helping her both times.
    • 2018: Alexa Bliss won the Women's Money in the Bank ladder match and cashed in on Nia Jax later that night to become Raw Women's Champion. Carmella defeated Asuka in a singles match and retained the Smackdown Women's Championship.
    • 2019: Shane McMahon defeated The Miz in a steel cage match. Charlotte Flair defeated Becky Lynch in a singles match for the SmackDown Women's Championship with the help of Lacey Evans (although she would lose it to Bayley minutes later). The returning Brock Lesnar won the Men's Money in the Bank ladder match.
    • 2020: Bayley defeated Tamina to retain the SmackDown Women's Championship. Asuka won the Women's Money in the Bank ladder match which contained the WWE Raw Women's Championship as a heel, but in an inversion of the Kane, Bryan and Orton examples above, became a face champion.
    • 2021: On the pre-show, The Usos defeated Rey Mysterio and his son Dominik to win the Smackdown Tag Team Championship. On the actual show AJ Styles and Omos retained the RAW Tag Team Championship, Bobby Lashley retained the WWE Championship against Kofi Kingston, Charlotte Flair defeated Rhea Ripley to win the Raw Women's Championship, and Roman Reigns retained the WWE Universal Championship against Edge.
    • 2022: The Usos retained the Unified Tag Team Championship against The Street Profits. Theory won the Men's Money In The Bank.
    • 2023: Both Damian Priest and IYO SKY won the respective Money in the Bank ladder match, though Sky was wildly popular and essentially villain in the loosest sense.
  • The Cameo:
  • Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Once it was given its own PPV, and Raw and Smackdown had their separate ladder match for their respective brand's titles, the Raw briefcase was red, while Smackdown was blue. With the unification of both titles into the WWE World Heavyweight title, it became gold. It became blue again in 2017 when it was Smackdown exclusive but is now green now that it's a dual-branded show again. The women's briefcase is colored white.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Usually gets cashed in immediately after the champ has already defended the title against someone else, or otherwise just got their ass kicked by someone else, or on the new champ immediately after they win the title.
  • Cue the Flying Pigs:
    • The 2011 edition. Dear God, the 2011 edition. CM Punk revealed in the weeks leading up to the event that his contract was set to expire the midnight of the night of the event, and he swore to win the WWE Championship and jump ship with it afterwards. He proceeds to do exactly that. (Of course, in that scenario Punk was a Designated Villain at best, since he was wildly cheered on TV during the lead-up to the match, and the 2011 edition took place in his hometown of Chicago.)
    • The 2016 edition, and twice in less than ten minutes, no less. First, Seth Rollins pinning current "Top Babyface" Roman Reigns clean to become the new WWE World Heavyweight Champion, causing the entire arena to explode... only for Dean Ambrose's music to hit, who before the main event had won the MITB briefcase. Seth Rollins holds the championship belt ready to strike when Dean comes down the ramp, only for Dean to come out from under the ring instead, blindside Seth, cash-in and pin Rollins to become the WWE World Heavyweight Champion. That night all three former members of The Shield held the championship, but Dean Ambrose was the one to ultimately stand tall and definitively be considered the champion. A result that no one saw coming.
    • The 2020 edition, simply put, nobody expected Otis to win the match.
  • Darkhorse Victory: The 2020 has Otis of all people win the men's briefcase out of a group that includes three former World Champions in Rey Mysterio, AJ Styles, and Daniel Bryan, fan favorite Aleister Black, and Baron Corbin.
  • Defeat by Modesty: How Del Rio won his briefcase. Both he and Mysterio were on ladders trying to reach the briefcase when Del Rio, in a moment of Genre Savvy, removed Mysterio's mask. Mysterio immediately covered his face, and Del Rio pushed him off his ladder and was able to retrieve the briefcase without interruption.
  • Defeating the Undefeatable: The 2023 event saw The Usos giving Roman Reigns his first pin-fall loss in three-and-a-half years, in a Bloodline Civil War tag team match.
  • Did Not Think This Through: Becky decides to drag Bayley down from the ladder under the briefcase with an open handcuff hooked onto her mouth...with the other cuff attached to her wrist. IYO used this to her advantage by putting the cuff on Bayley, so now she can't climb up the ladder.
  • Enemy Mine: Short team ups will happen to get rid of another person, but as soon as that deed is done, they will turn on each other.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: In the 2013 edition, Punk had the ladder match won and was on his way to his third briefcase and a guaranteed shot at the WWE Championship, but was screwed out of it by his best friend Paul Heyman. No one was honestly surprised, and Punk was beating himself over the head because he knew he should've seen it coming but stupidly trusted Paul anyway.
  • Executive Suite Fight: In the 2020 edition, in which the namesake match took place at WWE's Titan Towers, AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan found themselves brawling into Vince McMahon's office.
  • Face–Heel Turn: At the inaugural event, Kane won the Smackdown MitB briefcase as a face and saved World Champion Rey Mysterio from an attack by Jack Swagger after the latter lost his match... only to cash in on Mysterio afterwards and turn heel.
  • Food Fight: In the 2020 edition, in which the namesake match took place at WWE's Titan Towers, several wrestlers encountered Paul Heyman preparing to enjoy a buffet table to himself, then initiated one of these.
  • Gimmick Matches: The ladder matches.
  • Golden Snitch: Due to the timing of a winner (often a heel) cashing in his Money in the Bank contract - particularly creating a match immediately after the champion completed a hard-fought match - the resulting championship "match", which ranges from ten seconds to at most three minutes, ends up being a Golden Snitch resulting in a new champion who had to do way less work than the old champion.
  • Heel–Face Turn: CM Punk and Cody Rhodes were both betrayed at the 2013 event by Paul Heyman and Damien Sandow, respectively, leading to both Punk and Rhodes to turn face afterwards. Asuka turned face the day after she won the Women's match at the 2020 event.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: In the Women's MITB match in 2023, Becky Lynch uses a pair of handcuffs — one that she's already cuffed to — to hook Bayley's mouth so she can't climb the ladder. Unfortunately, IYO SKY took advantage of their feud to cuff Bayley, thus Becky is unable to climb the ladder since the handcuffs were positioned under a rung. IYO then takes the opportunity to climb on top of Bayley for the wind.
  • Improbable Weapon User: Every Mr./Mrs. Money in the Bank has used the briefcase as a personal weapon at some point. Hell, The Miz used his first briefcase as a weapon so often that by the time he finally cashed in on Randy Orton, it visibly had several dents and had a lot of its paint scratched off.
  • Improvised Weapon: The ladders will be used as a weapon.
  • Interesting Situation Duel: Due to the cancelling of all events with crowds in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that year's edition of the Money in the Bank ladder match turned into a fight up WWE's Titan Towers, with a ring with the ladders and briefcases situated on the roof. Oh yes, and both men's and women's matches happened simultaneously. This led to situations such as AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan finding themselves brawling into the office of Vince McMahon, several wrestlers starting a Food Fight after finding Paul Heyman preparing to enjoy a buffet table to himself, and both Rey Mysterio and Aleister Black being thrown over the edge of the roof.
  • Laser-Guided Karma:
    • People who have cashed in the briefcase before usually later find the case cashed in on them. One notable case is Edge, the first man to cash in two MiTB briefcases, who had the case cashed in on him after a well-deserved beatdown by Batista... by CM Punk, who would later on become the second man to cash in two briefcases and the first and only man to not only win multiple MiTB ladder matches, but also consecutive MiTB ladder matches. For the record, Punk also got cashed in on years later by Alberto Del Rio, bringing everything full circle.
    • The 2016 edition had a particularly poignant event that Michael Cole fittingly dubbed "The Ultimate Payback". Two years prior, right before that year's edition of this event in fact, Seth Rollins betrayed The Shield to join The Authority. The Sell-Out used his new status to make the lives of his former brothers hell and screw over their attempts at revenge, especially during his personal blood feud with Dean Ambrose. That year, Ambrose was screwed out of the briefcase by Kane, which allowed Rollins to win it. Rollins would later cash it in at WrestleMania 31 during the title match and screw over both Roman Reigns and then-champion Brock Lesnar to win it himself. Dean would attempt to win the title from Seth in a ladder match at the 2015 edition, only to come up frustratingly short (he was literally fingertips away from winning). Now, fast forward to the 2016 edition. Rollins has just returned from a Game-Breaking Injury that ended his title run (itself another case of this trope), and seeks to win the title that he claimed he never lost off then-champion Roman Reigns. He does — only for Ambrose, who had won the Money in the Bank ladder match earlier that same night, to blindside him from behind, cash in, and win the title off him, pulling it all out from under Rollins and finally getting his revenge for Seth's betrayal.
  • Loophole Abuse: Enough that the MITB has its own section.
  • Loser Leaves Town: Subverted with the Punk vs. Cena match in the 2011 edition. Punk was leaving either way, but if Cena lost he was to be fired. Didn't happen, of course, though not for the reasons you think.
  • Nerf: General agreement is that this is why Cena won RAW's briefcase in 2012, only to fail to win the title thanks to Show's interference. Up until Cena, just about every owner of the briefcase had gone on to become world champion, making them effectively "champion-in-waiting". By having Cena fail to win the title, it injected a bit of unpredictability back into the concept by adding the caveat that successfully cashing in does not equate to winning a world title. Since then, while the briefcase has made several more wrestlers champions, a few have failed to win titles with it regardless, making it no longer the guaranteed Golden Snitch it used to be.
  • Precision F-Strike: In the 2011 edition, after Mark Henry defeated Big Show, Henry fractured Show's fibula, leading to Show saying "Aw, fuck!", which was uncensored.
  • Red Baron: The winners are dubbed "Mr./Ms. Money in the Bank".
  • Rooftop Confrontation: In the 2020 edition, in which the namesake match took place at WWE's Titan Towers, with a ring with the ladders and briefcases situated on the roof, this naturally happened. Both Rey Mysterio and Aleister Black found themselves thrown over the edge of the roof.
  • Running Gag:
  • Start My Own: The Money in the Bank ladder match was originally an event that took place at WrestleMania, and proved so successful that it was given its own PPV, and that has become so successful that it's now considered by many to be to Royal Rumble what SummerSlam is to WrestleMania (as both Royal Rumble and Money in the Bank give the winners of their namesake matches a world title opportunity), and an argument has been made that rather than there being a "Big Four" of WWE PPVs (the three aforementioned events and Survivor Series), there are actually now five, with Money in the Bank as the fifth. (A similar argument was made while King of the Ring had its own PPV, with the winner of the namesake tournament also receiving a world title opportunity.)
  • Ur-Example: When people think of this PPV or the match in general, they think of CM Punk. While Edge may have have been the first to win the match and cash in two briefcases, Punk is the only man to have won the match multiple times, and the only man to have done so in consecutive years. Plus, there was the events of the 2011 edition, the defining moment of Punk's entire career, where he ascended to superstardom. He is by far the most successful Money in the Bank competitor in history, and would have won the briefcase an unprecedented third time in 2013 had it not been for Paul Heyman.
  • Wham Episode: The 2011 edition of MitB ended with CM Punk winning the WWE Championship from John Cena and running away with it, one hour before his contract expired, indelibly humiliating Vince in the process. The next night on RAW, Cena was supposed to be fired — but he wasn't, due to Vince being fired himself.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: That is the purpose of the briefcase. In fact, the very first edition of the PPV in 2010 had this happen to Rey Mysterio when Kane cashed in his briefcase the very same night he won it (holding it in total for 50 minutes), beating Jack Swagger's record for the shortest amount of time to cash in a briefcase.

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