Money in the Bank 2025: The Briefcases Aged Better Than the Show

The women's ladder match has the roster to become a spectacle and spends much of twenty-five minutes settling for something merely good. There are strong individual ideas: Roxanne Perez and Giulia briefly working together, Rhea Ripley emerging from beneath a pile of ladders, Stephanie Vaquer using the Devil's Kiss against the steel, and the dual Code Red sequence onto bridged ladders.

The problem is connective tissue. Too many stretches feel like one wrestler performing while the rest wait for the next arrangement. The danger is visible, but the urgency to actually retrieve the contract arrives later than it should.

Naomi winning improves the match in hindsight because WWE eventually pays the briefcase off at Evolution. In the moment, the finish is clean and decisive: she dumps Ripley and Bliss from the ladder and climbs before the field can recover.

WWE adds the match only hours before the show after Dominik Mysterio and Octagon Jr. collide at Worlds Collide. That spontaneity could have made the bout feel fresh. Instead, four minutes and fifty-five seconds make it feel borrowed.

Octagon gets a few flashes of the athleticism that made him an appealing crossover opponent, but the match is essentially an introduction followed by Liv Morgan's distraction, a 619 and a Frog Splash. The result protects Dominik's title and does almost nothing for the challenger.

On a five-match premium event, there was room to let this breathe. WWE simply chose not to use it.

This is the card's best conventional wrestling match because Becky Lynch and Lyra Valkyria have something more useful than ladders: a reason to dislike each other.

Valkyria wrestles with the frustration of someone who has already beaten Lynch and still cannot get out from under her shadow. Lynch keeps finding ways to make the match about status. The work outside the ring, the middle-rope Manhandle Slam nearfall and Valkyria's Nightwing on the floor all give the match escalation without turning it into a finisher catalog.

Lynch wins by grabbing the tights on the roll-up, which is exactly dishonest enough for the character. Then Valkyria fulfills the humiliating stipulation by raising Becky's hand before immediately dropping her with another Nightwing. The title changes hands without pretending the feud is emotionally finished.

The men's ladder match is better than the women's because the chaos develops into stories instead of merely arranging spots. Andrade and Penta take the expected risks. El Grande Americano turns an absurdly tall branded ladder into comedy without completely breaking the match. LA Knight keeps giving the crowd someone obvious to want.

Then the final act becomes a faction war. Bron Breakker and Bronson Reed arrive for Rollins. Jacob Fatu and JC Mateo answer for Solo Sikoa. Fatu finally reaches the moment the entire Bloodline subplot has been pointing toward, yanking Solo from the ladder and screaming his hatred before driving him through a ladder bridge.

Rollins winning is predictable and strategically excellent. The briefcase becomes a loaded gun for the rest of the summer, eventually paying off with the SummerSlam cash-in after the fake-knee-injury ruse.

The interference keeps this from becoming a cleaner ladder-match classic. It also gives the match consequences that survive well beyond the bell.

The main event spends its first half wrestling like a house-show tag team match that accidentally wandered into the closing slot of a major event. Cena and Paul isolate Jey Uso, Cody waits for the hot tag, and very little happens that could not have fit comfortably on television.

The back half wakes up. Logan Paul's drone-assisted sequence is ridiculous in a way that actually works, his springboard moonsault through the announce table is spectacular, and the four men finally find the pace the match has been withholding.

Then the hooded figure appears. R-Truth, whose announced departure from WWE had generated immediate backlash, returns less than a week later and costs Cena the match. The pop is enormous. Cody pins the WWE Champion and gets the result needed to move their story toward SummerSlam.

It is a terrific moment attached to a merely decent match. Those are not the same thing, even when the building reacts as if they are.