This past Saturday, emanating from the Smoothie King Centre in New Orleans, WWE hosted ‘Money in the Bank’. One of the highlights on the yearly PLE calendar due to the titular ‘Money in the Bank’ Ladder Matches, where the man/woman who unhooks the briefcase earns themselves a guaranteed title opportunity whenever they want across the next year, which naturally more often than not results in them becoming a World Champion. But of course, as is to be expected with WWE PLE card’s these days, those titular ladder matches only made up two of the five booked matches on the night.
To the likely dismay of the men competing in their respective ladder match, opening the show we saw Roman Reigns defending his World Heavyweight Championship against LA Knight. Knight has been a constant crowd favourite for many years now, to the point where many are and have been clamouring for a long time for LA Knight to become a World Champion, demands made stronger due to Triple H’s comments following Money in the Bank back in 2023 where he expressed how “Good things come to those who wait”. And Knight had waited 3 years to get another crack at Roman, and before the match, he expressed how he felt this could be his last true chance at becoming a World Champion and he would not know what happens next if he again fell at the final hurdle.
During the match, LA Knight gave Roman everything he had, both managing to kick out of Superman Punches & Spears from the OTC and staying on even ground with Roman, most notably at one point countering an attempted spear into a beautiful ‘BFT’ for a near 3 count. Things went to the outside and Knight continued to give everything he had, sidestepping an attempted Spear by Roman to send him through the barricade by the timekeepers area & powerbombing him through the announce table but this couldn’t keep Roman down. Ultimately, Roman was able to counter an attempted BFT by dropping LA Knight onto the top rope (notably the most somewhat dirty he has gotten in a match since beating CM Punk at Wrestlemania) before hitting a pair of Superman Punches and one more Spear to once again defeat LA Knight and retain the World Heavyweight Championship.
After the match, Royce Keys, Bronco Nima & Lucien Price of ‘946’ made an appearance in the crowd to indicate Roman Reigns was on their hitlist and he would soon meet a similar fate to Solo Sikoa (kidnapped/abandoned in the middle of nowhere a few weeks ago) & Jacob Fatu (ran over by Jaida Parker). However, Roman seemingly saw this coming as The Usos & Solo came up from behind 946 to begin a backstage brawl throughout the arena, ultimately thwarting 946 as Jaida Parker pulled up in an SUV and helped them escape The Bloodline, atleast until their planned 6-Man Tag Team Match taking place on tonight’s episode of Monday Night Raw.
Next, we saw the Women’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match, where Jacy Jayne, Lola Vice, Roxanne Perez, Tiffany Stratton, Lash Legend & Sol Ruca were competing to be the one to unhook the briefcase and secure their path to World Championship gold, a match that no doubt Stephanie Vaquer was watching closely considering she was set to defend the Women’s World Championship later in the night. As one can expect from a ladder match it was a chaotic affair, early in the match Stratton hit a Swanton off the top of a ladder onto all the other women in the match and taking what looked like a really nasty blow to the head slamming into the padded floor.
Throughout the match, each woman got close to unhooking the briefcase before one of the other 5 women stopped them from claiming victory. In a blitz right near the end of the match, Roxanne Perez hit a ‘Pop-Rox’ on Tiffany Stratton to allow her free room to try climbing to victory, only to be stopped by Sol Ruca who hit a brutal Sol Snatcher diving off the ladder to take Perez out of the equation. Ruca was then stopped herself by Lash Legend, and Legend seemingly had no one left to stop her claiming victory, but despite everything Tiffany Stratton somehow had enough energy left over to climb the other side of the ladder, strike Legend with the hooked briefcase multiple times to send her crashing to the ringmat and unhooking the briefcase herself to win the match and become the first ever two-time Women’s Money in the Bank winner. An interesting result to keep an eye on considering the current Women’s Champion on Smackdown is of course Chelsea Green who Stratton has formed a close friendship with over the last few weeks.
Following the chaos of the Women’s Ladder match was chaos of a different kind where Oba Femi was set to square off against Bronson Reed. Reed of course returned to WWE after months injured at last months Saturday Night’s Main Event assaulting Oba Femi during his match against Bron Breakker which set this crash course into action. Both Reed & Oba are monsters so as you could imagine both men were trading moves that would destroy smaller opponents but barely phased either man. The Vision quickly got involved with the match, but an attempted ambush by Austin Theory was quickly thwarted by Oba Femi, then the official caught Logan Paul running up to Bronson Reed on the other side of the ring, and quickly ejected Logan from ringside assuming he’d been planning to hand off some Brass Knuckles to Bronson as he’s been known to do in his time with The Vision.
However, they’d seemingly anticipated this as it was Theory who had the Brass Knuckles so he was able to successfully hand them to Bronson who struck Oba Femi twice with the Brass Knuckles before hitting a Tsunami. But somehow, all of this still wasn’t enough to keep Oba Femi down as he kicked out of the Tsunami (which I believe is the first time anyone has managed to do so) and after dodging an attempted Moonsault once again thwarting attempted interference from Theory before hitting a Fall from Grace to defeat Bronson Reed and in a way simultaneously defeating the entirety of The Vision (apart from Bron Breakker who was nowhere to be found, likely focused on the upcoming Men’s Money in the Bank ladder match).
But before that, it was time for the Women’s World Championship match with Stephanie Vaquer defending the title against both Liv Morgan & Becky Lynch in a triple threat title match. Throughout the match, a pattern seemed to develop where Becky Lynch & Stephanie Vaquer were so focused on each other that they often overlooked/forgot about Liv to some degree. But at other times both women had & expressed their own grudges with Morgan, at one point both women hooking separate submission moves on Liv Morgan at the same time, which would have posed an interesting dilemma had she tapped out in trying to figure out which of Becky/Vaquer won in this scenario.
Nearer to the end of the match, Vaquer seemingly had Liv beat once again after defeating her just over a month ago in her home country of Chile, only for Becky to drag Jessica Carr out of the ring at the last moment to break up the pinfall a fun continuation of the seemingly never ending rivalry between Becky Lynch & Jessica Carr and a comforting reminder that sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same. The match ended with Stephanie Vaquer knocking Becky Lynch off the ring apron to send her tumbling onto (not through) a table that had been set up outside. But in this moment, again Vaquer had seemingly neglected to keep her eye on Liv Morgan who quickly caught Vaquer off guard with an Ob-LIVion to swipe a pinfall victory and reclaim the Women’s World Championship (hopefully this time, she will defend the title more often).
And for the Main Event, we saw the Men’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match, which saw Je’von Evans, Penta, Bron Breakker, Trick Williams, CM Punk & Kevin Owens competing for the briefcase. An early notable point to consider in the match was Kevin Owens & CM Punk being at eachothers throats, Kevin doing all he could to fulfil his promise prior to this match that if he wasn’t going to win the briefcase he’d do everything in his power to make sure Punk didn’t win either. These two being so laser focused on each other ultimately proved to be their undoing as it meant they were both blindsided by Bron Breaker with a spear through the barricade which took both men out of the match. Another victim of Bron’s rampage was Je’von Evans who was obliterated by a spear from Breakker mid run-up for an attack that was so brutal Je’von had to be stretchered out of the arena and sent away in an ambulance.
Meanwhile Breakker’s rampage continued with even Lil Yachty (and by extension Trick Williams) not being safe from an assault by the Unpredictable Badass wanting to win the briefcase to firmly establish himself as ‘The Future’ of WWE considering he never really definitively proved himself against Oba Femi due to Bronson’s return. But then, the ambulance from earlier in the match returned & drove down the ramp, revealing that Je’von Evans had somehow stolen the ambulance and drove himself back to the match full of adrenaline and a quick onslaught of offence looking to swipe the briefcase before his body caught up with the fact he was in agonising pain. Unfortunately for Je’von this didn’t work as after setting up a massive ladder too far to the side to be able to retrieve the briefcase he was once again put down by Breakker who shoved the ladder over, sending Je’von crashing through the roof of the ambulance to once again take him out of commission.
At this point, there seemed to be no one left stopping Breakker, however you likely remember there was one more person in this match I haven’t yet mentioned since the opening sentence. And that was by design, as Penta emerged to thwart Breakker, hitting a Mexican Destroyer onto a ladder that had been balanced between the ladder set up in the middle of the ring & bottom rope. Allowing Penta to scale the ladder and win the briefcase himself to an elated reaction from the live crowd & those watching at home. It has been a long running theme in WWE that they’re no doubt trying to find the ‘”next Rey Mysterio” as there is very little that can prove as universally adored as a good luchador. And Penta since his debut in WWE just last year at the start of 2025 has quickly become a fan favourite. And of course it was only a few weeks ago that he had an incredible match against Roman Reigns in Mexico City almost thwarting Roman himself to become the new World Heavyweight Champion. So with this in mind, no doubt Roman Reigns will cautiously be looking over his shoulder to see if Penta re-emerges to swipe the title from him. With Sami Zayn having the exact same fear over on Smackdown, and potentially even El Grande Americano in WWE having to be concerned as there in theory would be nothing stopping Penta cashing in for the AAA Mega Championship.
