The New Day (C) def. The Forgotten Sons, John Morrison and The Miz and Lucha House Party – SmackDown Tag Team Championships
This match played like every other multi tag team WrestleMania match you’ve ever seen. It’s quite clear that the long term feud is going to be New Day going up against Forgotten Sons, since they’re the team that has defeated them since New Day won the titles. I can only assume that with Jaxson Ryker’s interference, this will predispose to Xavier Woods coming back to even the odds.
I can’t help but feel that the element of working in front of no one hurt this match since no one was there to react to the high impact spots, such as Morrison hitting the Spanish Fly from the top rope to the outside. That said, the quality of the match was still quite good. Creative spots, decent flow, and the right team won. That’s really all there was to it. You can pretty much count on The New Day to deliver a serviceable show opening sprint. ***1/4
Bobby Lashley def. R-Truth
So a match that came out of nowhere was changed into a match that came out of nowhere with no backstory other than Lashley getting his heat back for losing the Gauntlet match. Whatever. Good to know at least Truth is still alive. No rating.
Bayley (C) def. Tamina – SmackDown Women’s Championship
As anyone with half a functional brain cell predicted, Bayley retained with help from Sasha. I’m just going to say for the record that Tamina is a very, very bad ring performer and shouldn’t be anywhere championships any time soon. She only has about 2 or so moves and looks like every single clothesline or transitional move takes the wind out of her. So all that talk about Tamina being dominant lasted about 3 weeks, even though she hasn’t done anything to show us that, right? Can’t wait for her to randomly reappear in about 3 years to talk about how big and dominant she was!
Thankfully, I expected the match to be bad so my expectations were already heavily subverted. While it wasn’t the complete dumpster fire I expected, it definitely wasn’t good. *1/2
Braun Strowman (C) def. Bray Wyatt – Universal Championship
Well, that was a certainly a thing that happened. So basically the crux of this Universal Championship match was Bray convincing Braun to wear a mask and Braun basically saying. “SIKE!” First, you have to commend Bray for wrestling a match against someone who’s probably 70-100 lbs bigger than him in what basically amounts to a Christmas Day outfit.
The match itself was kind of whatever. I personally don’t think Strowman and Wyatt are the type that have chemistry with each other. They’re kind of just versions of themselves pretty much so they don’t enhance each other’s abilities.
Honestly, it never felt like a Universal Championship match. Instead it felt more like a match that would be used to build up to a match. The addition of the puppets were….something else that happened too. I don’t really know how I feel. It’s clear Bray will use his brain cells and utilize The Fiend next time. This? Maybe just barely passes. Probably not worth re-watching though. **1/4
Drew McIntyre (C) def. Seth Rollins – WWE Championship
A lot of pressure was on this match because of the weakness of the under card. Thankfully, I can say that this match delivered and then some. Rollins and McIntyre have a lot of parallels in their career, but they also enhance each other in the ring. Drew is built like something out of Greek mythology, and Seth can be counted on to deliver in big match situations and if the opponent can enhance his abilities.
The match had a fantastic flow with a great ending. I didn’t even suspect the little sign of respect Drew gave to Seth after the match. The two just absolutely clicked together. There’s not much else to say other than that it was a tremendous WWE Championship match that did a good job of carrying the under card. I think this was exactly the kind of opponent and match that Drew needed in order to start establishing his WWE Championship reign. We’re off to a pretty great start. ****1/4
Otis and Asuka Win MITB Ladder Matches
Okay, so I’m going to be grading both matches since they happened simultaneously. If Ultimate Deletion had a baby with the House of Horrors match, I feel like this is what you get as the result. To put this in a phrase, it was both laughably bad and unbelievably entertaining simultaneously. I really can’t describe it. It’s WWE superstars brawling all over their corporate office for a briefcase.
You can’t really adequately grade something like this because it’s designed to be whacky and dumb by design. I guess the first thing I can address is the winners. My personal predictions to win each match was Aliester Black and Nia Jax. Black because he had the highest ceiling, and Nia because of the history she had with Becky Lynch.
Asuka, I’m more than cool with. She’s a rival of Becky’s, she’s a legit badass, and she’s one of the few people who you could believe can take the title off of Lynch. So she’s good. Then, there’s Otis. Wow. OTIS! Let’s be honest here, no one predicted him winning. That was actually one aspect I liked about Otis winning. The sheer shock and unpredictability of it.
Maybe Otis should have been everyone’s pick to win this match because of how unconventional the choice would be. After all, Otis was the only person in the match without a singles title in their WWE career. He’s big, jiggly and has basically become the modern day Rikishi. But you don’t expect him running down the ramp and cashing in to become WWE or Universal Champion, correct?
Well, the quarantine has given a platform for WWE to be more creative and just experiment with certain things without fear of fan backlash live. Well, Otis has quickly become a crowd favorite and WWE clearly sees…something in him. Now just imagine what Dolph Ziggler is feeling.
Now, of course, the question is will Otis actually cash in to win one of those titles as one half of Heavy Machinery? Otis recently stated that if he won the briefcase, he’d use it on the tag titles, which I think would be a complete waste. If you’re going to have Otis carry the briefcase, you might as well go all in and see where it takes you. Here I thought Kofi Kingston was about as unconventional a potential WWE Champion got, but then you have OTIS. Guess we’ll see where this leads.
I don’t really want to give this a match rating because it wasn’t really a formal match. But I will say that I was entertained. The cameos of Vince, Stephanie, Dude Love, John Lauranitis, the food fight, the imagery of Undertaker haunting AJ Styles and other little details kept me engaged throughout. Don’t know how you felt about it, but I liked it kind of in the same way I like a trainwreck that has entertainment value. If that makes sense.
Only thing I will say is that I was disappointed that the big spot was Corbin shoving Mysterio and Black off the building and clearly landing onto what was probably a soft platform right underneath. And the announcers said nothing about it. Like, Corbin literally just tried to murder two people. Nothing. Whatever.
Conclusion:
Middle of the road show for me overall. The undercard was kind of lacking, but I do think the tag title match and the WWE Championship match sort of salvaged that to an extent. I also appreciated the effort given in the MITB match as it was truly more different than anything I have witnessed. Overall, I’d say more good than bad for Money In The Bank 2020. Thumbs in the middle, leaning up. Until next time. Who’s ready for Universal Champion Otis?
