10 Things You Didn't Know About WWE Money In The Bank

10. It Wasn't The Most Successful Gimmick Pay-Per-View

Money In The Bank is the last surviving "gimmick PPV".

Some never took off, like the bizarre 'Fatal 4-Way', which was never a true drawing attraction as a match. Breaking Point also failed, since Vince McMahon, after 1997, was too cowardly to book a definitive submission finish. Others, while often entertaining in isolation, ruined through overexposure and contrived, calendar-first booking the aura of the titular attractions. TLC and Hell In A Cell were finally abandoned by Triple H, and the PPV schedule is all the better for it: the location-specific big matches generate wonderful atmospheres. Writing subjectively, watching Sheamus and GUNTHER do battle live in a furnace in Cardiff is preferable to yet another Cell match. It was far more brutal than the PG downgrade, too.

Only Money In The Bank has survived and will continue to survive. The actual cash-in has lost its potency as a storyline device, but the PLE itself is a cheat code to critical acclaim and fan engagement. The shows are invariably very good to tremendous.

You'd think, then, that Money In The Bank was the most successful gimmick PPV, but this isn't the case - or at least it wasn't in the pre-Network era, for which viewership data is more readily available.

Between 2009 and 2013, HIAC drew buys of 300,000, 210,000, 180,000, 199,000 and 200,000. MITB in comparison, between 2010 and 2013, drew 162,000, 195,000, 188,000 and 199,000. MITB outdrew HIAC just once: in 2011, when CM Punk challenged John Cena for the WWE title. Does that make Punk the biggest draw not named John Cena in the early 2010s?

Not necessarily...