10 Radical Ideas To Save WWE Money In The Bank

I had to include this. It’s my favourite dumbass gimmick of the Attitude Era: the rule under which the Hardcore Championship was contested under 24/7 rules, and where a match could take place anytime and anyplace: as long as a referee was present to count a pinfall or acknowledge a tap, the title could change hands.

The angle was comedy gold when it began back in February 2000 with Crash Holly’s first ever Hardcore Championship run. With a few gaps in between where a) the company forgot about the rule or b) whoever the Hardcore Champion was at the time was considered too scary to attack out of nowhere (cf the Undertaker or Steve Blackman), the 24/7 rule lasted two and a half years, until deactivated by Eric Bischoff in August 2002, a week before the title was unified with the Intercontinental Championship and retired.

During that time, the title changed hands over two hundred and twenty times, and many of those times were genuinely, laugh-out-loud hilarious: like when Crash was ambushed at an amusement park, or at the airport - or, most memorably, pinned very very quietly while he was asleep in his hotel room.

If the contract inside the briefcase is determined to be for either the WWE World Heavyweight Championship or the Women’s Championship, then anyone on the roster can have a go - and, just as no one took the Hardcore title seriously enough to worry about this stupid rule devaluing the title, so no one’s really going to take a briefcase seriously either.

I’m not necessarily suggesting that it be played for as many laughs as the Hardcore 24/7 rule, but something similar, where the briefcase is being passed around from person to person, would bring an awful lot more fun back into the Money in The Bank gimmick, as each successive briefcase holder just tries to make it to the next WWE show where they can get themselves a properly sanctioned cash-in opportunity.

With the WWE Network in place, it’s theoretically possible for these off-duty skirmishes to be streamed live to your smartphone at silly o’clock in the morning, and for WWE fans to live tweet these impromptu little battles.

It’s essentially a Money In The Bank match that lasts for weeks, perhaps months, until someone finally gets lucky enough to be able to cash the briefcase in. And you know it’ll be Kevin Owens, probably because he’s been hiding under the ring all day.

This angle, of course, should be dedicated to Mr. 24/7, the Super Heavyweight himself, Crash Holly: 22 time Hardcore Champion and originator of the rule. Rest in power, man.