7 Match Star Ratings For WWE Money In The Bank 2021

3. Rhea Ripley Vs. Charlotte Flair - RAW Women's Title Match

Somehow, some way, this actually worked.

The build was horrendous - just the absolute dirt-worst manifestation of WWE's awful values. Two entitled heels played a game of ar*ehole chess to build the all-important momentum.

And yet, in the ring, this actually worked.

To an improbable extent.

After an indictment of a start, in which fans chanted loudly for a performer that hasn't appeared on TV for over a year - which says so, so much about the state of WWE TV, incidentally - Charlotte Flair and Rhea Ripley grasped the core of their rivalry and applied it to a quite brilliant professional wrestling match.

If there was one semblance of an actual pro wrestling theme here, Flair and Ripley seized f*ck out of it; the match was worked with a tremendous, animosity-laced competitive edge that informed how great it was. An evenly-structured back-and-forth, it was elevated above "every modern wrestling match you've ever seen" territory through the charged emotion and constant, oscillating sense of parity. This was a super-dramatic and physical bomb-lobber that reached an awesome peak with Charlotte's top-rope Natural Selection.

And yes, she pulled The Face - the dreaded "What more can I do?" face - but for once, the strength of the work warranted it.

Snug, believable work that constantly escalated, this ruled.

Star Rating: ★★★★