50 Worst Wrestling Moments Of The 2020s (So Far)
5. The 2020 Money In The Bank Ladder Matches
The WrestleMania 36 Firefly Fun House match was genuinely bold and creative; night one’s Boneyard “short” was well-received by those who like the Undertaker.
Elsewhere, WWE’s cinematic pandemic output was profoundly atrocious, and the genre reached a nadir with the über-depressing Money In The Bank ladder matches. Filmed in Titan Towers, the idea was for the wrestlers to “climb the corporate ladder” and retrieve the briefcases from atop the building.
The matches were not even deeply unfunny, because “deeply unfunny” would suggest that WWE was unsuccessful in the bid for comedy. What jokes were crafted here, exactly?
A skinny anonymous young bloke played Doink. There was no gag here. A guy who didn’t look a thing like Doink was just…seen lurking behind an office chair. This wasn’t even a contrived Family Guy cutaway gag. There was no “Remember that time Doink [did something edgy and unconnected to the plot of the episode]?”.
This was simply “Remember Doink?”
The same thing happened with Brother Love, who also just appeared and did nothing. Unless this was a biting satire on Bruce Prichard’s yes-man reputation, it was nonsensical. Meanwhile, Vince McMahon, who made his roster work during a pandemic with sloppy shop safety protocols, reprimanded Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles for spreading germs in his office.
The wrestling was secondary to a bleak, glorified ‘90s slideshow. The comedy, which did not exist, was emphasised. It was in fact so bad that WWE could not even adequately execute the oldest and most basic gag. Dana Brooke failed to spot a WET FLOOR sign, slid, and landed on her back. This might have worked, on a crude level anyway, if the rest of the wrestlers stopped fighting to laugh at her. Instead, she took the bump to a backdrop of a tense string arrangement.
A slapstick gag framed as a dramatic story beat; WWE couldn’t even do children’s television, much less cinema.