Money in the Bank 2024: Great Ladders, One Wasted Briefcase, and a Night Built for Tomorrow

The men's ladder match wastes little time pretending six people can cooperate politely. McIntyre supplies the blunt force, Andrade and Carmelo Hayes supply the most elaborate ladder collisions, Chad Gable turns wrestling technique into weaponized leverage, and Jey Uso and LA Knight carry the loudest crowd support. The match is busy without losing track of who is closest to the contract.

Andrade's springboard Spanish Fly onto a ladder and the sunset bomb that sends Hayes onto a bridged ladder provide the most frightening visuals. Gable's German suplexes give the middle of the match a different texture, while his hanging fall from the briefcase creates one of the few ladder spots that looks dangerous because it is simple rather than because it is architectural.

The finish is efficient. Uso appears to have the opening, McIntyre throws a ladder at him like a javelin, lands the Claymore and retrieves the briefcase. On its own, the result works because McIntyre has promised exactly this outcome. What happens later damages the prize, not the quality of the match that awards it.

Sami Zayn versus Bron Breakker is built around experience surviving horsepower. Breakker can accelerate into offense that Zayn cannot physically match, so the champion spends much of the match absorbing, redirecting and waiting for the younger challenger to make one mistake. That structure fits both wrestlers even if the match never reaches the violent ceiling their styles suggest.

Breakker's clothesline from the apron, Frankensteiner and gorilla-press power make him look like the obvious athletic threat. Zayn's Blue Thunder Bomb and corner exploder work because they arrive as interruptions rather than sustained control. The match's best detail is that Breakker keeps looking one movement away from ending it and gradually becomes more frustrated that Zayn refuses to cooperate.

One Helluva Kick ends the match after Breakker misses his opening. The finish is abrupt, but that is also the story: Breakker has enough power to dominate and not enough experience to recover once Zayn catches him clean. His SummerSlam rematch would eventually complete the lesson.

Priest and Rollins begin with a respectable championship match buried under the knowledge that Drew McIntyre has spent the evening promising to appear. The champion's Razor's Edge and Rollins' Stomp create credible near falls, and both men work with enough urgency to make the stipulations feel more than decorative. The anticipation of the cash-in is part of the match whether McIntyre is visible or not.

Then Rollins hits the superplex into the Falcon Arrow and appears to score three. The referee stops counting at two without a visible kickout, producing a moment so conspicuous that the audience reacts to the officiating rather than the wrestlers. McIntyre's music hits shortly afterward, and the match has to move from accidental confusion into planned chaos without enough time for the first problem to disappear.

The cash-in itself is dramatically effective. McIntyre enters as the new contract holder, Punk attacks him with a chair and camera cable, and Priest pins McIntyre after South of Heaven. The angle advances Punk-McIntyre and pulls Rollins into the dispute, but it also consumes the men's Money in the Bank contract almost immediately. Storytelling value and match quality move in opposite directions here.

The women's ladder match understands that six-person chaos works best when everyone owns a specific corner of it. Chelsea Green supplies character and the eventual spectacular fall, IYO SKY supplies the most frightening innovation, Lyra Valkyria and Zoey Stark take enormous punishment, Naomi keeps sequences moving, and Tiffany Stratton carries the winner's confidence long before she actually reaches the briefcase.

The match is not clean. Several transitions are visibly ambitious, Stark's attempted offense produces an ugly landing, and some ladder positioning requires patience from everyone involved. Yet the danger has a genuine escalation. Sky's piledriver from the ladder onto another ladder is horrifying, while Green's climb creates the rare moment when a crowd knows exactly what catastrophic bump is coming and still reacts as though it hopes to prevent it.

Stratton tipping Green from the ladder through the tables is the correct final image because it gives the winner both agency and spectacle. She then retrieves the contract without another layer of interference. The match elevates Stratton immediately, and her eventual successful cash-in gives the result a satisfying second life.

The main event has one central job: make Solo Sikoa's Bloodline feel capable of threatening Cody Rhodes, and especially make Jacob Fatu look different from everyone already in the group. Fatu accomplishes that almost immediately. He absorbs Orton's draping DDT, moves with alarming speed and turns routine six-man exchanges into moments where the audience watches him rather than the legal men.

The long control period on Kevin Owens slows the match more than it helps. Owens is an excellent sympathetic target and the hot tags work, but twenty-five minutes creates stretches where the Bloodline's methodical offense becomes repetition. Cody's entrance into the closing sequence improves the pace, and the referee bump finally gives the match permission to become the chaotic fight the story has promised.

Owens puts Fatu through the announce table, Orton distributes RKOs, and Cody lands consecutive Cross Rhodes on Solo before Fatu returns to save the sequence. Fatu's Implant DDT leaves Cody exposed for the Samoan Spike, giving Solo the pin over the WWE Champion. The finish is obvious contender-building but effective contender-building, and Fatu leaves the match looking more important than the result itself.