Check out the posts below for\u00a0our Marvel 75th Anniversary Omnibus thingy, and for this week’s podcast season finale! \u00a0Meantime, though, I’ve got a PPV to cover…<\/p>\n
Money in the Bank<\/em> has wound up an interesting pay-per-view (a term I’ll keep using for want of anything better, even though most\u00a0US viewers will probably be WWE network subscribers) more by accident than design. \u00a0This is\u00a0the show built around the annual Money in the Bank\u00a0Ladder Match, in which the winner gets\u00a0the right to challenge for the\u00a0world title\u00a0whenever they want in the next year. \u00a0Since “whenever they want” is treated as many “on any show, without having to give any notice”, it’s effectively a licence to ambush the champion and practically guarantees\u00a0winning the title. \u00a0A couple of people have failed, but it’s still\u00a0a pretty reliable indication that somebody is destined for the main event.<\/p>\n But WWE Champion Daniel Bryan is out with neck surgery. \u00a0The original idea was that he’d be back in time to wrestle on this show,\u00a0so the company stalled on last month’s show and ran a bunch of angles with the idea that he’d resist the Authority’s attempts to\u00a0pressurise him to surrender the title. \u00a0Then it turned out he\u00a0wouldn’t<\/em> be able to wrestle on this show either, so they did a\u00a0screeching U-turn and stripped him of the title after all.<\/p>\n This in turn has led the Money in the Bank Ladder Match – which was already some way into having its participants announced – to be turned into a ladder match for the vacant title, and a\u00a0second<\/em> ladder match, with completely different wrestlers, to be added to the card for the contract.<\/p>\n There are also other\u00a0matches on the card. \u00a0Just.<\/p>\n 1. \u00a0WWE World Heavyweight Title – Ladder Match:\u00a0Kane v Sheamus v Alberto Del Rio v Cesaro v Roman Reigns v John Cena v Randy Orton v Bray Wyatt.<\/strong> \u00a0This sounds\u2026 interesting. \u00a0Because it’s for the vacant title, they’ve had to put all the big names\u00a0(who aren’t injured, which is alarmingly few) into this match. \u00a0Modern ladder matches\u00a0have tended to be big on high-flying stunts but\u00a0there are no immediately obvious risk-takers here. \u00a0I suspect they’ll be building this one on storyline as much as they can – which is for the best, since they really can’t afford an injury to any of these guys.<\/p>\n The main storyline here is that the Shield have\u00a0finally split up after Seth Rollins turned heel and\u00a0sided with the\u00a0Authority (the evil owners). \u00a0That leaves Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose going their own way, both as babyfaces, but it’s clear that Reigns has now been marked as the star of the future. \u00a0The jury is still out on whether Reigns can\u00a0do a decent main event singles match, something he’s never been called upon to do on television – though reports of his house show matches have been positive.<\/p>\n Reigns and Ambrose are feuding with the Authority, who didn’t want them in this match, but (in an angle best forgotten) Reigns got\u00a0in by persuading Vickie Guerrero,\u00a0a lesser authority figure who knew she was on the way out,\u00a0to add him to a battle royal for the final slot. \u00a0The Authority’s preferred winner is their ally Randy Orton; Kane, who serves as an Authority henchman,\u00a0appears to have been added to the match to help Orton win, rather than to win himself. \u00a0(Whether Kane shares this view\u00a0is yet to be seen.)<\/p>\n Cena and Wyatt have\u00a0been in their own feud for months, and\u00a0this match seems like a good way of transitioning them out of it. \u00a0Wyatt is a heel, but since we’ve established that the Authority like their champions to be good-looking\u00a0conventional wrestlers,\u00a0it’s hard to imagine that they’d be thrilled to see him win either –\u00a0their idea of the “face of the company” surely does not extend to a hefty psychopath leading a southern gothic cult.<\/p>\n Cesaro is getting a push with Paul\u00a0Heyman as his manager but doesn’t have anything in particular going on by way of a storyline right now. \u00a0Sheamus and Del Rio are making up the numbers (and were both announced before it\u00a0was decided that the match would be for the vacant title).<\/p>\n So who wins? \u00a0There are\u00a0no ideal answers, which faces the WWE with a range of unhappy options. \u00a0Orton and Cena are safe choices but represent a back pedalling to something we’ve all seen before, and that a large chunk of the audience are likely to reject as repetitious. \u00a0Kane, Sheamus and Del Rio are all\u00a0upper midcard wrestlers, and\u00a0they would be very tough to sell as champion. \u00a0Reigns would be popular in the short term,\u00a0since he’s the new hot babyface with the most momentum behind him – but precisely\u00a0for that reason, you don’t want to throw away months of storyline where he chases the title by having him win it as soon as he\u00a0goes solo. \u00a0Wyatt and (barely) Cesaro are conceivable, but there’s no point in either case unless they’re going to have a decently long reign, and other factors may point against that.<\/p>\n Bear in mind the schedule for the next few shows. \u00a0July is\u00a0Battleground<\/em>, a generic\u00a0monthly show; it doesn’t really matter. \u00a0But August is\u00a0Summerslam<\/em>, which is meant to be\u00a0one of the big shows of the year. \u00a0And September is\u00a0Night of Champions<\/em> – not an important show in itself, but one that happens to fall due at around the time when the first batch of six-month WWE Network subscriptions falls due for renewal. \u00a0So that needs to be a big show too.<\/p>\n This suggests to me that we’re not getting a new\u00a0heel champion being sent forth to defend his title in those shows. \u00a0Another factor is that the company has strongly\u00a0indicated that Brock Lesnar will be the\u00a0title challenger at\u00a0Summerslam<\/em>; he’s a heel, so that points to a babyface champion. If we’re looking for a transitional babyface champion to lose to somebody more important at a bigger show in a couple of months time, Cena starts to make sense. \u00a0Reigns emphatically doesn’t. \u00a0On the other hand, there are\u00a0plenty of\u00a0rumours that it’s going to be Cena, and the WWE has a habit of changing its plans to surprise people when that happens. \u00a0But\u00a0I think the big picture does point to him as a least-worst option.<\/p>\n 2. \u00a0Money in the Bank Ladder Match: Kofi Kingston v Rob Van Dam v Dolph Ziggler v Seth Rollins v Dean Ambrose v Bad News Barrett\u00a0v Jack Swagger.<\/strong>\u00a0 Meet pretty much everyone else on the roster who’s healthy, isn’t in another match, and isn’t a comedy act. \u00a0Oh, except that Barrett separated his shoulder at the Smackdown tapings on Tuesday, so he’s probably out. \u00a0That’s unfortunate, since he’s being pushed right now and would have made a\u00a0possible winner. \u00a0It’s hard to imagine Kingston, Van Dam, Ziggler or Swagger getting the briefcase, not least because three of them have had it before, so it can scarcely be used to elevate them; as for Kingston, he’s firmly slotted as a mid carder and I don’t\u00a0sense any willingness to change that.<\/p>\n