WWE Money in the Bank 2026: The most underwhelming event of the year

It’s rare that I review WWE PLEs on this site, and I’m not usually negative about the WWE product as a whole. However, last night’s Money in the Bank show demonstrated how much WWE creative is currently on a holding pattern.

The show started well with the World Heavyweight Championship match, as Roman Reigns defended the title against LA Knight.

We all knew Knight wasn’t going to win the title, as I have a feeling the endgame is for Oba Femi to be the guy who dethrones Reigns, either at WrestleMania or sooner. However, we could at least expect a really strong match between these two, and that’s exactly what we got.

Knight and Reigns showed why they are considered main event players in WWE. They put together a match that took fans on a ride and made them believe Knight might actually have a chance of beating Roman for the championship. He didn’t, and Reigns ultimately retained, but Knight was elevated in the process, which is better than nothing.

Afterward, Reigns had his first interactions with Royce Keys and his group, leading to The Bloodline and Solo attacking them. The two groups then brawled all over the arena. That was a great overall opening for the show, in my opinion, and I want to see where this goes.

Then, the show started to go into a downward spiral, beginning with the women’s Money in the Bank match.

Nothing against these women, as they did their best with what they were given and put on a very strong match overall. However, this was an opportunity for WWE to create a new star, as four of the participants were fresh faces, while the two veterans, Roxanne Perez and Tiffany Stratton, could help them along.

Personally, I would have given the briefcase to Roxanne, but I wouldn’t have minded seeing Sol Ruca, Lash Legend, or even Lola Vice get the big win over Tiffany, who was the safe choice in my opinion.

At least with Roxanne, you would have someone new getting a push, along with the interesting story of whether she would betray Liv Morgan and cash in on her. With Tiffany, I feel like one of two things will happen. Either she’ll betray Chelsea Green and cash in on her, which would automatically turn Tiffany heel, or she’ll wait for Chelsea to lose the title and cash in on whoever wins it, probably Nikki Bella. That would suck.

WWE had a chance to make a new star with this match, but they decided to go with the same old, same old. I’m not really interested in that.

Next, we had Oba Femi vs. Bronson Reed, which was pretty much what I expected: a way to make Oba look unstoppable and create the next Brock Lesnar in the process.

Too bad they had to kill off The Vision in order to do that.

Nothing against the match itself, but where does The Vision go from here after being completely destroyed by Oba Femi? They did pretty much everything they could to beat him, even using brass knuckles and having Bronson Reed hit the Tsunami. Oba still got up and destroyed not only Bronson but Austin Theory as well, while making Logan Paul look like a complete idiot in the process.

This was a humiliation of The Vision as a faction. How can fans take these three seriously after this match? The only interesting part was seeing Paul Heyman’s reaction afterward and wondering where things will go from here.

While this did wonders for Oba, The Vision was collateral damage, and it’s going to be difficult for the group to recover and convince fans that they’re still a strong faction.

The fourth match was the Women’s World Championship match, and I had high hopes for it because all three women have delivered great matches together in the past. However, this was an average match at best, and I really didn’t understand the ending.

This showed that the only reason WWE gave Stephanie the championship in Chile was to give fans a big moment at that show and try to boost subscriptions to its Club WWE program. Outside of that, it made little sense to give the belt to Stephanie only for her to drop it back to Liv a month later.

Liv as champion isn’t interesting anymore, especially since the Money in the Bank briefcase is on SmackDown, and I doubt WWE will have Tiffany jump to RAW to cash in.

So where does this leave us? Most of the newer faces on the RAW roster have already been pushed aside by the way the Money in the Bank match played out. There’s also no real reason for Roxanne or Raquel to turn on Liv right now. We’re essentially stuck with the status quo, meaning we’ll have to continue watching the same three women face each other for the title.

Finally, the men’s Money in the Bank match main-evented the show, and boy, was it a chore to get through.

This match shouldn’t have been as long as it ended up being. I would have liked to see Bron Breakker win, as giving the briefcase to a heel is always more entertaining than giving it to a face. However, I don’t mind Penta winning it, as it makes sense to give the briefcase to one of the hottest characters in the company.

The problem is that the match really dragged. Aside from a few awesome spots, most of which were performed by Je’Von Evans, nothing really stood out, and the match was just plain boring.

Again, I have nothing against Penta winning the briefcase, and his path to the championship will be interesting. However, I don’t see him having a successful cash-in. This feels more like WWE trying to capitalize on Penta’s sudden popularity following his great showing against Roman Reigns in Mexico.

In the end, for a show that’s considered to be on the same level as the Royal Rumble and Survivor Series, this was an underwhelming event. It showed that WWE creative is afraid to take chances and would rather go with the safe option, which is exactly what happened last night.

The Money in the Bank PLE used to be one of the most unpredictable shows of the year. Now, it’s just another event where nothing particularly special happens, which is kind of sad to see.