12 Ups And 15 Downs For WWE In 2017 (2nd Opinion)

7. Ms. Money In The Bank Is A Man

James Ellsworth
WWE

For all the talk about how WWE has been breaking down barriers for women and blazing new paths with “first-ever” matches left and right, there was one glaring problem that cropped up in 2017, one that gets glossed right over: Money in the Bank.

While it’s true that WWE took a big step forward in holding the first women’s MITB match in 2017, the company slapped everyone in the face with how the match was decided: James Ellsworth climbed the ladder and retrieved the briefcase for Carmella.

It’s not the first time a person who was seconding a wrestler played a deciding role in a ladder match. Far from it. And while the goal was to really sell that Carmella stole the briefcase, there was a big problem: This was the first women’s MITB ladder match. It was sold as a big deal. Women can do what men can do. They can step up and compete in the same kind of difficult and dangerous matches as the men. Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks already did that with Hell in a Cell.

But the SmackDown women were all upstaged by a chinless man. None of the women on the roster can claim that they climbed the ladder and grabbed the briefcase in WWE’s first Money in the Bank match. And while they did a MITB redo on SmackDown, there really is only one "first-ever" match.

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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.