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Apollo Crews has been one of the fastest-rising Superstars in WWE after WrestleMania 36. Following a move to RAW, Apollo Crews' career has made more progress in a few weeks than it did in the previous five years with the company.
In the last episode of RAW, Apollo Crews pinned Andrade in a tag team match and earned a United States title shot, where he came close to victory before the referee stopped the match due to a storyline knee injury. As a result of that, he was pulled from the Money in the Bank 2020 ladder match.
Tom Colohue told Korey Gunz on Dropkick DiSKussions that it was all planned and revealed a possible reason why Apollo Crews was pulled from the contest:
It's a kayfabe injury. He was taken out of the match. They knew it was going to happen beforehand, so before they filmed this, they had the match. They knew it was coming, they knew it was planned, so it was definitely written ahead of time. It does get some sympathy for the character. With Apollo Crews, the concern has never been his wrestling. He's a very talented performer. It's always been about the character and naturally connecting to the audience. You think back to how many times people going all the way to the promised land and pulling it back. Daniel Bryan in 2013 was an example. These are things that make people care."
He explained that while it's disappointing that Apollo Crews isn't in the match, there may have been a few possible reasons as well for him being pulled out:
With Apollo Crews, they've done very good in a very short space of time. It's disappointing that he won't be in the ladder match, but we have to ask ourselves certain questions - maybe there's a niggling injury, maybe he's going into a period of self-quarantine and won't be seen for a couple of weeks, so they decided to do that. Maybe they found out that he's never been in a ladder match and that he's afraid of heights."
Will Apollo Crews benefit in the long run?
Apollo Crews will be expected to target Andrade and the United States Championship once he returns to WWE TV. We won't be surprised to see him return after Money in the Bank to claim and possibly win his first title in WWE in nearly five years.
He's certainly got all the tools - we just hope that he can start to develop on the character front. If he progresses well in that regard, then big things await him.
