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Since its inception in 2005, Money in the Bank has been a key storytelling device for WWE. While not all Money in the Bank Ladder Matches are created equally, there’s never been an objectively bad edition of the match itself. Moreover, each time the briefcase has been cashed in, it has created an electric moment, often with big storyline implications either for crowning a new champion, or at least for defusing the Money in the Bank bombshell that might have dropped at any given moment.
Not every Money in the Bank winner enjoyed a career-defining, explosive change to his or her fortunes. Take Dolph Ziggler. Winning the contract and cashing in in electric fashion offered memorable moments, and pushed him further out of also-ran status into surefire eventual Hall of Famer status. In the end, though, it didn’t really change the shape of his career, as he has continued to occupy the upper mid-card and fringe main event status since.
This article takes a look at five times winning Money in the Bank contract truly changed someone’s career and five times when winning ultimately meant nothing.
#10 Career Changing: Edge
The original Money in the Bank cash-in established a template for years to follow. On his podcast with Christian, Edge has discussed that he pitched cashing in on a beaten down champion, thinking it was the most heelish way to use the briefcase. He claims that he still didn’t expect to win, and yet doing so against John Cena in early 2006 immediately shot The Rated R Superstar into the stratosphere.
While he would drop the WWE Championship before WrestleMania, he’d be in one world title picture or another for most of the last five years of his career.
Pre-Money in the Bank, Edge was a strong upper mid-card act with a history of being half of an all-time great tag team behind him. Via Money in the Bank, he became the kind of guy who could main event a WrestleMania and headline a Hall of Fame class, escalating his entire legacy in the process.
#9 Did Nothing: Damien Sandow
The overwhelming majority of Money in the Bank Ladder Match winners have enjoyed some degree of career advancement, even if it’s only a momentary thing. Even guys who lost the briefcase or failed in their cash ins like Baron Corbin, Braun Strowman, or Mr. Kennedy each momentarily looked like they were on their way up the card or like probable world champions. When Damien Sandow won, it came across as an anomaly.
Was WWE really going to get behind this guy so thoroughly entrenched in the mid-card? It turned out the answer was no as he cashed in on a hurt, but not incapacitated John Cena, and wound up defeated in humiliating fashion moments later. Sandow’s career didn’t progress in the short or long term and, if anything, his Money in the Bank failure put a stain on his WWE run that he would never overcome. It’s telling that Sandow finished his WWE run with only one championship reign to his name—a tag title run playing The Miz’s lackey.
#8 Career Changing: CM Punk
When people recall the legacy of CM Punk in WWE, they tend to come back to 2011, when his Pipe Bomb promo and iconic performance against John Cena at Money in the Bank threatened to position him as the top star in the company. The years to follow saw him consistently at or near the main event level, too.
While the summer of 2011 undoubtedly elevated Punk’s WWE career, there’s a fair case to be made that he wouldn’t have been in position for that run had he not first become a two-time Money in the Bank winner. Punk won the briefcase first in 2009 and successfully cashed in on Edge to enter the main event conversation. Winning again in 2010 and cashing in on Jeff Hardy to set up a heel turn further cemented The Straight Edge Superstar’s place as a guy in the upper card conversation.
#7 Did Nothing: Jack Swagger
Jack Swagger tends to feel like a big missed opportunity for WWE. He was a big, athletic, powerful guy with significant amateur wrestling credentials behind him. As such, he seemed like he really could have been a top star for the company. After a largely dominant run in WWE’s ECW, Swagger moved up the more proper main roster and promptly became just another guy.
His fortunes seemed to change when he unexpectedly won the Money in the Bank briefcase at WrestleMania 26, only to successfully cash in days later. However, Swagger’s World Heavyweight Championship run would wind up completely forgettable. He never had a signature victory to his name and wound up quietly dropping the title to Rey Mysterio in a Fatal Fourway Match.
Swagger would get one more shot at a big push three years later opposite Alberto Del Rio, and come up short then, too. It’s not clear what WWE’s rationale was, but Money in the Bank, and even a successful cash in, feel like little more than footnotes to Swagger’s totally underwhelming WWE tenure.
#6 Career Changing: Daniel Bryan
Daniel Bryan’s career would explode with a big push in the summer of 2013 that led to him feuding with John Cena and Randy Orton, before ultimately reaching the top of WWE at WrestleMania 30. It didn’t always look like Bryan would even be an upper card guy, though. He started out more humbly, largely used as a mid card underdog until he won his Money in the Bank briefcase in 2011.
Bryan would go in to cash in on The Big Show to kickstart a fun run as a deluded, conniving smaller heel who evaded Show and Mark Henry before finally running into Sheamus. It was this big break that got Bryan taken seriously, setting him up for Team Hell No and his awesome summer of 2013 that would follow, and set him up as one of the biggest stars in WWE. Without Money in the Bank, Bryan may have languished in the mid card and wound up leaving WWE before he reached his greatest heights.
#5 Did Nothing: John Cena
When John Cena won a Money in the Bank Ladder Match in 2012, he was already well established as the face of WWE and arguably on the downward slope, transitioning out of that role. He used his briefcase to schedule a match with reigning WWE Champion CM Punk for the 1,000th episode of Raw. The match was momentous, if not for its quality, at least for setting up Punk’s heel turn that would change the landscape at the top of the card for months to follow.
However, when it comes to Cena, WWE could have just as easily arbitrarily placed him this match with Punk as used Money in the Bank as a device to get there. Indeed, this first failed cash in had less impact on Cena than it did on Money in the Bank itself. Here, it was proven that the briefcase wouldn’t always translate to a title, and to be fair, Cena was a good person to fail first given how bullet proof he and his WWE legacy already were by that point.
#4 Career Changing: Randy Orton
When Randy Orton won Money in the Bank in 2013, it would be easy enough to look at it as not so dissimilar to Cena winning the year before. Orton had won plenty of world titles by that point in his career, main evented WrestleMania, and was solidified as at least a top five star of his generation in terms of kayfabe accomplishments.
However, in 2013, Orton felt pretty stale and it was unclear whether he would accomplish anything of note moving forward. Money in the Bank would set him up for a unique cash in at the end of SummerSlam as he and Triple H both turned heel in a manner of minutes to take the WWE Championship off of Daniel Bryan moments after his triumphant victory over Cena.
Orton’s Money in the Bank victory added an important chapter to his career as he’d go on to spend most of the year to follow as the top heel in WWE—not only a champion, but the top full time star representing The Authority until Seth Rollins usurped him.
#3 Did Nothing: Alexa Bliss
Alexa Bliss became the second ever Ms. Money in the Bank in 2018, and did generate some buzz with her cash in as she interrupted a heated match between Ronda Rousey and Nia Jax to steal the Raw Women’s Championship.
Despite a compelling moment and adding another title reign to Bliss’s resume, it’s telling that she’d go on to lose that title when Rousey squashed her at SummerSlam. In this sequence of events, Bliss felt like less of a meaningful champion than a vehicle to hold off on Rousey winning her first title, and a more clear cut heel for The Baddest Woman on the Planet to dominate at the bigger PPV event.
For now, Bliss’s career is much more defined by her earlier work as Women’s Champion on both SmackDown and Raw, during periods when she played the top female heel on the WWE landscape.
#2 Career Changing: The Miz
Over the first years of The Miz’s WWE tenure, something remarkable happened. The former reality TV star whom no one took all that seriously paved a way for himself as one of the best talkers of his era and a reasonable worker. He got over, particularly in tag teams with John Morrison and then The Big Show, until winning Money in the Bank felt reasonable for him.
And yet the question loomed—would WWE actually go all the way with him winning a world title? Despite his progress, especially in 2010 when he won the briefcase, Miz still didn’t feel like the kind of talent anyone could buy pinning a world champion. Money in the Bank offered the perfect set up for him to do just that, taking the title off of Randy Orton on an episode of Monday Night Raw.
The world title reign to follow, which included winning a WrestleMania main event, set up Miz as a surefire Hall of Fame guy. His road was rocky in the years to follow, but there’s a legitimate case to be made that Money in the Bank in 2010 set up the foundation for Miz’s sustained success from 2016 to the present.
#1 Did Nothing: Sheamus
In 2016, Sheamus won the Money in the Bank briefcase. In some ways, the accomplishment—not to mention The Celtic Warrior using it to beat Roman Reigns for a WWE Championship—confirmed his status as a top tier star of his generation. On the other hand, it seemed to confirm Sheamus’s odd place in WWE as a guy who has garnered a number of pushes and racked up an impressive slate of accomplishments that includes all manner of titles and winning King of the Ring and a Royal Rumble, while never truly being the guy.
Sheamus seemed a little out of left field when he won the briefcase and like a bit of an afterthought when after he cashed in, as the focus was more on Reigns and his anti-authority storyline opposite Triple H and Vince McMahon. In the end, Reigns would take the title back from Sheamus in short order and send Sheamus packing back to the mid-card and tag ranks, where he has remained in residence ever since.
