10 Radical Ideas To Save WWE Money In The Bank

I have a lot of love for the circumstances of the Seth Rollins cash-in at WrestleMania 31. Not just because it took the title off Brock Lesnar, who I didn’t feel should have had it to begin with; or because it kept it off Roman Reigns, a character who’d been booked into the ground by the people who were supposed to be getting him ready for the gold.

No, I loved it because it opened up storyline possibilities. It wasn’t just the outcome, it was the mechanism it unveiled. For the first time in ten years, the briefcase was cashed in on a match i progress, adding Rollins to the main event of WrestleMania - not just at the last minute, not just to capitalise on a weakened champion, but as the game was in play, as part of the story of the title fight underway right then and there.

Utter genius: now we know that the cashing in of the briefcase at any moment instantly transforms that moment into a title match with the briefcase holder one of the participants. So what else can we do with it?

During the course of a calendar year, a champion is frequently set up in situations and positions that don’t involve losing his title. Matches with weird stipulations, non-title bouts where something else is up for grabs. Most of the time, it’s something as commonplace as being booked into a six-man tag team match as the impromptu main event of a bog standard RAW or Smackdown - but the WWE Champion has been known to turn up in NXT and take on the NXT Champion in an non-title exhibition match, or agree to take on and murder some random jobber for kicks.

What if (for example) a heel champion like Seth Rollins decided to make an example of someone like Zack Ryder… only for Money In The Bank Winner Sami Zayn to show up and make that supposed squash match on free television a triple threat for the title, with Ryder suddenly going from sad sack to joint number one contender?

What if the show-closing six-man with the Club versus Reigns and Enzo & Cass suddenly became a seven man melee for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, as AJ Styles cashed in his briefcase? You’ve got Gallows and Anderson protecting their boy’s lunge for the gold, Reigns desperately trying to hold onto the title knowing that any of the other six men could pin another to take his gold… and Big Cass, suddenly and out of nowhere a number one contender.

There are any number of possibilities: and when you look at it that way, the briefcase suddenly stops being a predictable lead weight, and becomes a live grenade thrown into a crowded room...