After 10 straight successful MITB briefcase cash-ins, you had to know that eventually someone would cash in unsuccessfully. Even with most wrestlers taking advantage of a knocked-out champion, the law of averages said that one of those champs would manage to pull off the upset. However, the first unsuccessful cash-in came from an unlikely source, and in an unlikely fashion. When John Cena won the Money in the Bank briefcase in 2012, he wasted little time in announcing the next night that he would cash in the briefcase the following week on Raw against WWE Champion CM Punk. The two had had epic battles in the past, and with this being Raw 1000, expectations were high for a PPV-quality match. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYRXCw6eat0 What we got instead was a 15-minute match that ended in a disqualification when Big Show lumbered out and attacked Cena, ending the match. The aftermath saw Rock save Cena and Punk turn heel by assaulting Rock. So basically, the MITB briefcase was used as a plot vehicle to turn Punk heel and sow the seeds for the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania main events. Lame.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
