WWE Money in the Bank Live Results, Highlights and Grades

We’re still live, but now the show officially is underway!

Our first match of the night is the Women’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match.

The match immediately divulges in chaos, highlighted by a whirlybird ladder spin by Nikki.

Women get sandwiched and slammed against ladders for several minutes. Most notably, in a strange spot, following a Super Kick from Carmella, Mandy Rose kicked Carmella in her kicking leg. Looked as if her leg buckled. Carmella tried to walk away, but Mandy kept trying to work. Carmella looked to “shoot” shove her away. She was then taken to the back. Hope Carmella’s not injured.

Some minutes later, Dana, Bayley, Mandy and Naomi all climb the ladder only to get thrown off by Natalya. From atop the ladder from the outside, Ember hits Natalya with a death defying Eclipse! Shortly after, Mandy hits her facebuster finisher on Ember onto a ladder.

Mandy goes to climb, but Carmella comes back to the ring limping. She wails on Mandy like a house of fire; slamming her head into a ladder repeatedly before Super Kicking her for good measure.

Everyone’s down. Carmella goes to climb on one leg, but Mandy’s friend Sonya comes in to pull Carmella down and Spear her. Sonya revives her buddy to climb the ladder, only to be met and pushed off the ladder by Bayley, who retrieves the briefcase and becomes Ms. Money in the Bank!

Grade: B- Your usual car crash ladder match, but it had a lot of fun spots. The weirdest thing about it was the Carmella/Mandy thing, which was admittedly distracting and odd in execution. Why fake a botch for a spot? Why make us think a wrestler is legit injured and “shoot” mad about it? Kudos to the women’s performances for making the spot look real and making marks like me buy into it, but it just felt odd. I didn’t like it and it hurt the match in my eyes, but other than that, solid ladder match.

Moving on from that, Rey Mysterio challenges Samoa Joe for his US Title.

The two go to blows at first, which is a bad move against a skilled striker in Joe. The champ gets the upper hand until Mysterio uses his high flying abilities. He crashes onto Joe with a seated senton. Joe gets a broken nose from the senton and delivers a thunderous chop to the little man.

He picks him up, Rey reverses into a hurricanrana for a 1 … 2 … 3!

A replay shows Joe’s shoulders were off the mat, but Mysterio wins the US Title! Samoa Joe attacks Mysterio after the match in front of his “teenage son” as Michael Cole put it. Dominic is 22-years old, by the way.

Grade: D In complete contrast to their Mania match, this didn’t end in a sudden, shocking way. This was more confusing than shocking. Not very entertaining. The beatdown after the match makes it make sense I suppose, but it makes Mysterio look like a lucky clown rather than a champion. Not feeling this. Not feeling this at all.