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This was the first ever women’s Money in the Bank ladder match.
As is often the case with WWE, most of the talk surrounding this match centred on the finish, so I’d be remiss to start anywhere else. For those who didn’t see it, James Ellsworth, Carmella’s squeeze, knocked Becky Lynch off the ladder, climbed it himself, unhooked the titular briefcase, and tossed it to a prone Carmella on the mat, who was then declared the winner.
There’s a lot to wrap your head around here, but your tolerance for this finish will vary depending on how much stock you invested in the idea of this as a ‘historic’ match – and I don’t refer to it as such because WWE chose to use that verbiage. Bar the odd street fight here or there on very rare occasions, weapons-based gimmick matches were not the domain of women in WWE until very recently. To participate in a heavily promoted ladder match, one of the most popular stipulations in all of wrestling, after decades of men making their names this way, is a cool milestone – and an important one. I can 100% understand anyone who was frustrated with this finish if they were hoping for a more… traditional conclusion. I think people, especially WWE’s long-suffering female fans, wanted something that would be used in video packages for years to come. They wanted their version of Razor Ramon standing atop the ladder at Wrestlemania X with two Intercontinental titles. As Carmella herself alluded to on Twitter, they wanted their ‘boyhood dream’ moment. They didn’t get it. They didn’t even get the simple visual of a woman, be she heel, face or whatever, climbing the ladder and retrieving an object. That seems like a pretty low bar for WWE to miss.
Were this not a ‘first time ever’ occurence, I don’t think I or anyone else would care as much. The finish was a new idea to get some heat on a young heel, for a show that is sorely lacking one on the female side, so that much I can get on board with.
It’s an overly-cutesy finish, which I’ve grown to hate, and that’s WWE’s bread and butter these days. Any match that isn’t just two dudes trying to pin each other becomes a game of ‘how creative can we be?’ in this company. This was akin to Big Show losing a tables match by accidentally stepping on one and breaking it because he’s so fat. It was a cute idea; some people even loved it. But a lot of people just groaned. When a push comes to shove though, it just irks me because you only get so many ‘first time ever’ moments. This will always be the first ever ladder match with women in WWE. It will always be James Ellsworth. It will outlast both his and Carmella’s careers. And in years to come I think even people in favour of this finish will realize that.
As for the match, well, I don’t have another 500 words to say on that. It was a pretty lame ladder match, near the bottom of the Money in the Bank rankings, were you to be a big enough loser to sit down and actually rank them. While Charlotte wowed near the finish with another beautiful dive from the top rope to the floor; there wasn’t much to speak of here in terms of high risks, innovation or thrills. There were several instances where people came off very shakey and nervous, which is understandable, but the end result was a very underwhelming match, bell to bell. There was good heat though, with most of the nearfalls (is that what you call it when someone almost gets the thing in a ladder match? Answers on a postcard) generating a lot of crowd noise – but that only took the match so far.
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