10 Radical Ideas To Save WWE Money In The Bank
4. The Gauntlet Gimmick
More of a one-off storyline possibility, this one - but we’ve seen wrestlers fight over ownership of a Money In The Bank briefcase, and the third winner - Mr. Kennedy - even lost his opportunity in a match like that.
So let’s have a babyface contender win the briefcase, with a WWE World Heavyweight Championship contract on the line… and then have an irate, unfair and belligerent Horrible Boss try to take it from them.
If you’re a corrupt authority figure, you can strip a man of a title, or force him to vacate it. You can even reverse a referee’s decision: claim that there was cheating he didn’t see, or a foot under the ropes.
It’s a lot more difficult to change the outcome of a Money In The Bank ladder match, though. By definition, the ending to such a match is pretty definitive - the briefcase is unhooked by one man, and held up for all the world to see. Equally, cheating doesn’t come into it when the match is a no-disqualification multi-man pile-up.
And what on earth would be the justification for taking away a Money In The Bank briefcase? It’s not a title, an honour belonging to the company that they can simply take from someone. It’s a legal contract that they own.
And so we enter a gauntlet storyline, whereby the winner’s Horrible Boss chooses to put them through defending their briefcase on every weekly episode of television they appear on, in increasingly elaborate and unfair circumstances, until he either tries to cash in it against overwhelming odds, or loses the briefcase to one of their cronies or henchmen.
Treat it like Ric Flair’s retirement storyline, where he was told by Vince McMahon that it was time to go, and that the very next match he lost would be his last. That’s dramatic, must-see television, right there.
Imagine that, instead of winning the Money In The Bank briefcase in 2011 when he was fairly popular, Daniel Bryan had won it in the midst of his huge swell of popularity in 2013, at the height of the Yes! Movement, and with the full might of the Authority against him. How would that have gone? What hoops would they have put him through?
Now imagine a Sami Zayn, or a Cesaro in that position. How would that go?