Stale Title Shots

Are the Royal Rumble and/or Money in the Bank starting to wear out their welcome a little bit?

It seems like there’s less and less of an actual plan with MITB every year (in his autobiography, Daniel Bryan confesses to having no clue he was cashing in until the day he did) and they’re mostly running the same guys out there every year.

Meanwhile, there hasn’t been a great Rumble in quite a few years and is failing to really elevate anyone involved anymore. Only once in the last ten years has someone won the Rumble and walked out of the main event of WrestleMania with the title… John Cena. Eight years after he won it for the first time.

I know the Rumble will never go away, hopefully they just learn how to book it without Pat Patterson one of these years. But could you see MITB going away at some point?

​Fo shizzle. The Sheamus win was pretty much WWE acknowledging that they had nothing for the gimmick this year and throwing up their hands and going "Fuck it, just put it on Sheamus and we’ll think of something later." And then they never thought of anything. It’s really become a giant booking albatross, where they have to think of a way to get out of making the MITB guy into World champion.

As for the Rumble, I kind of prefer the idea of torturing the World champion by making him defend against 29 guys. It accomplishes the same purpose that the Elimination Chamber served and makes the Rumble fresh for a few years at least. ​Given how many guys have either failed to win their Rumble-granted title shot at Wrestlemania, or simply been shunted to the opening match of the show (or in the case of Del Rio, BOTH AT THE SAME TIME), it’s really become a toothless stipulation.