9 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE Money In The Bank 2021

3. Poor Build Nearly Derails Title Bout

Rhea Ripley Charlotte Flair
WWE.com

If you watch Raw regularly, then you know heading into Money in the Bank that no feud was more poorly built than Rhea Ripley versus Charlotte Flair, and it showed from the get-go.

Oh sure, we’ll talk about how awesome the second half of the match was later, but from the intros until they started letting it all hang out, the crowd either didn’t care or actively crapped on the match by chanting for Becky Lynch.

That is a direct result of WWE doing a piss-poor job of building up Ripley’s character (spoiler: she doesn’t have one) and having a poorly defined feud where it was impossible to tell who was the heroine and who was the villain. Had WWE done anything resembling a decent job, fans would’ve been invested from the jump, rather than having to be sucked into it by the match itself.

So yeah, those first few minutes (and Charlotte’s middle finger) are all due to WWE’s horrific writing on Raw. The wrestlers earned the fans’ respect after that.

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Contributor
Contributor

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.