Views From The Turnbuckle: Money In The Bank Preview, Predictions And More

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Traditionally, Money in the Bank has been one of WWE's brightest PPVs, so much so that along with the decline in emphasis on Survivor Series, some fans believe that it is now on the level of the traditional Big 4 PPV. More importantly, MitB, because of the ladder match(s) has a bigger ramification on the future plans for WWE than any other show, even more so than Wrestlemania. This year's card is loaded with big ideas, as in addition to the traditional MitB contract match, the world title will also be up for grabs in a 8-man ladder match.

I already covered the championship match in last week's column, so I will be brief here with my predictions. Breaking them down into tiers, I would say that Sheamus and Alberto Del Rio have no shot at winning. Roman Reigns, Cesaro and Bray Wyatt have a chance at winning, but the odds are fairly slim. Randy Orton and John Cena have the best odds at winning, and I think Cena comes through and wins his championship for the 15th time.

On a side note, a lot of fans are disappointed that Cena is inching closer to Ric Flair's 16 all-time world title reigns, which has become the accepted record for most major title reigns. While nobody is going to argue that Flair isn't a far better performer than Cena, if Cena were to break the record, would it really mean all that much? After all, it isn't really how many times you were the champion that matters, it is much more important on how LONG you were champion for. Cena has held the WWE Championship for 1,191 days, the fourth most in history. However, he is still about 1,000 days away from the two next closest champions, Bob Backlund and Hulk Hogan respectively. And there is no way he is getting anywhere close to Bruno Sammartino's record of 4,040 days as world champion. Yes, Flair held the world title for 16 times, but he also had some dubious title losses, only to quickly regain the title several days later. In 1984, he dropped the NWA World Heavyweight Championship to Kerry Von Erich, only to get it back 14 days later. In 1986, Dusty Rhodes enjoyed a 14 day title reign until Flair took it back. Although Flair's accomplishments are remarkably impressive, it wasn't like this was the perfect record that Cena is going to break.

Moving on, Triple H put a twist into the world title match on Monday night, announcing that Kane would be the 8th man in the ladder match. This was kind of odd to me, since it seems impossible for the fans to take Kane seriously. While he has been put in a lot of major spots over the last few months, the fact of the matter is that Kane has lost every single major match he has wrestled in recently. The likely scenario is that Roman Reigns will be close to winning the match, only for Kane to screw him out of the shot, setting up Kane vs Roman Reigns at Battleground.

In another twist, Triple H finally announced on Raw that there would be a traditional MitB ladder match at the PPV. While I'm excited for the match because it is always entertaining and the guys in the match are intriguing, it seems like WWE really dropped the ball on setting up the match. Did they not prepare on having a MitB match at the MitB PPV? Why did it take until the Raw go-home show for them to announce it? The match screams of something that was thrown together, as the participants didn't even have to qualify for the match, as the guys were just announced to be in it and that was that.

Obviously, the match is going to come down to Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins. I have very little doubt that those two guys are going to be the ones who leave Boston with the briefcase. I think the right thing to do here would be to have Ambrose close to winning the briefcase, but have Seth beat him out to it. Dean doesn't even have to be screwed out of the briefcase, Seth just needs to beat him for it, maybe by hitting him with a chair and climbing the ladder ala Edge at Wrestlemania 21. It will get some heat on Rollins, but it will also show fans that Rollins won because of Rollins, not because he is friends with Triple H. They can then have a match or two on the next few PPVs for the contract, adding extra interest to their already heated feud.

While the other guys in the match are mostly filler, they still form an important role on the show. This match should really be the best one on the card, because unlike the world title match, this one has a lot of the top bumpmen in the company, so expect a lot of good high-spots, which are what make these matches so entertaining. Ambrose, Rollins, Ziggler, Kingston, those guys are willing to do a lot of crazy stuff to wow the crowd, so expectations are pretty high for this match, and if it wasn't the match of the night, it would be disappointing.

The rest of the card is fairly mediocre. Paige will defend her Diva's championship against Naomi in another women's match that doesn't really seem to mean a whole lot. A lot of people expected big things from Paige when she won the title from AJ Lee on her first night on Raw, but since then the women's division has pretty much laid an egg. While Paige has been a decent ring worker, she hasn't really gotten the chance to do anything as champion. WWE seems content to just pull opponents names out of a hat and toss them into a title match on a PPV. Naomi probably doesn't have a chance in this match, and it is unlikely they will get a ton of time to work.

Goldust and Stardust will team up to face Rybaxel in a match that literally has nothing going into it. I have no idea what the future of Stardust is, but I hope it doesn't last very long. The novelty of the gimmick will likely wear off pretty soon, and I think Cody is money as a face just by being Cody Rhodes.

The WWE World Tag Team Titles are on the line as the Uso's are taking on Rowan and Harper. It is kind of strange for Rowan and Harper to be potential champions, but so far things have worked out really well between the two teams. They have had some exciting brawls and for the first time in a while, I'm truly excited about a tag team title match. The Uso's have really improved over the last year or two, and the way they talk and wrestle is reminiscent of the Briscoe Brothers. My only complaint with them is the phrase "Uso Crazy" is incredibly annoying and Michael Cole should be shocked by an electric collar every time he says it.

And there are other matches, we just don't know what they are right now. Despite the fact that WWE has tons of TV time, and a whole network dedicated to their product, they have managed to only have five matches on the card going into the PPV, three of which were thrown together at the last moments. WWE will likely trot out some other matches at the PPV, and just hope the fans get excited for them. The fact that WWE routinely adds matches to PPVs during the show is mind-boggling. Those matches literally mean nothing, because since they were not announced previously to the show, they translated to zero extra PPV purchases.

If there is one thing WWE can learn from Ring of Honor's "Best in the World" PPV it is that every match on that card meant something. The card had seven matches, and all of them had at least some form of storyline going into it and all the matches had a form of intensity to them. And ROH was able to do all this with only one hour of TV programming per week. Just think of how much better WWE can be with all of their TV programs.

Overall, the show has the potential to be one of the better wrestled shows of the year for WWE. It should be much better than Payback, and after the show, and we are going to know a lot more about the future of WWE and their plans after the show.

Here are my star ratings from NJPW's "Dominion" PPV that aired on Saturday.

The Young Bucks vs Time Splitters- ****1/4
Tetsuya Naito vs Tama Tonga- **3/4
Katsuyori Shibata and Hirooki Goto vs Yuji Nagata and Tomoaki Honma- ***3/4
Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Satoshi Kojima vs Lance Archer and Davey Boy Smith Jr.- ***1/4
Kota Ibushi vs Ricochet- ****1/2
Minoru Suzuki and Takashi Iizuka vs Toru Yano and Kazushi Sakuraba- **3/4
AJ Styles and Yujiro Takahashi vs Tomohiro Ishii and Kazuchika Okada- ***1/4
Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson vs Hiroshi Tanahashi and Togi Makabe- ****
Bad Luck Fale vs Shinsuke Nakamura- ***1/2

Here are my star ratings from ROH's "Best in the World" PPV that aired Sunday

ACH vs Caprice Coleman vs BJ Whitmer vs Tomaso Ciampa vs Tadarius Thomas vs Wantanabe- ***
Jay Lethal vs Matt Taven- ***
Cedric Alexander vs Roderick Strong- ****1/2
The Briscoes vs Matt Bennett and Matt Hardy- ****
Kevin Steen vs Silas Young- ***1/2
reDRagon vs Bad Influence- ***3/4
Michael Elgin vs Adam Cole- ****3/4