This past Saturday was an action-packed day of professional wrestling in the Los Angeles area. Earlier on in the day we got the incredible WWE/AAA crossover event ‘Worlds Collide’ from the Kia Forum and that evening we headed over to the Intuit Dome for WWE’s annual ‘Money in the Bank’ premium live event. I’ll start off with ‘Worlds Collide’ because well, it just makes sense right? It came first in the day so you may as well talk about it first, let’s not complicate things more than we have to here. I honestly feel like I enjoyed myself more watching Worlds Collide all in all than I did watching Money in the Bank and I don’t think that’s too crazy of a take. Not that anything was necessarily bad about Money in the Bank, it has just been nearing overkill with the premium live events lately and nothing felt overly exciting or unpredictable about the Money in the Bank matches, well not until the end but we will get to that. Worlds Collide felt like an entirely different kind of event, almost not WWE at all but within WWE’s sphere and that was really neat.
Everything from the entrance announcements all being in Spanish, to the even the way the entranceway and ringside area was setup was not like WWE, and it made for a fun, authentic feeling Mexican luchador style show because it was more so AAA than WWE. I know WWE as a company said they didn’t buy out AAA to come and change a lot of things and boy I sure hope that’s true. They’re a mega corporation now that they belong under TKO’s banner so I don’t always feel like I can trust what they say (check WrestleMania 42), but they shouldn’t change anything here. Just maybe give me subtitles if I want them and make the shows more accessible and I’ll be tuning into some AAA shows because this was great and I’ve always been a fan of luchadores anyways. Octagon Jr., Aero Star, & Mr. Iguana defeated Dragon Lee, Cruz Del Toro, and Lince Dorado in a six-man tag on the opening bout, which I totally expected to be the case not even knowing much about these guys. I am a fan of Dragon Lee’s as well, I think he’s a great wrestler, but this one was going to go to the AAA guys. One major takeaway from this match was Mr. Iguana was hilarious, if WWE gets the chance, they’re going to strap the merch rocket on that guy and sell all the lizard man t-shirts and stuffed iguanas they can. Stephanie Vaquer and Lola Vice beat Chik Tormenta & Dalys in tag team action in the 2nd match. This was an entertaining and rather short match as well aside from the whistling man that kept getting picked up on the mic, that took away from the in-ring action just a bit but not enough to not appreciate how good all these women really are in the ring. Stephanie was in the middle of pulling triple duty here as she wrestled on Smackdown, wrestled a tag team match here, and competed in the women’s Money in the Bank later in the night. Legado Del Fantasma defeated El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr., Pagano, and Psycho Clown in 6-man tag action next. This match was pretty cool and broke down into crazy nonstop action rather quickly. Santos picked up the big win for his team after a Superrana and Phantom Driver to Wagner sealed the deal. Side note, but I’ve never seen a luchador mask like Psycho Clown’s with the crazy Gene Simmons tongue sticking out on the mask below the actual mouth hole and now I feel like I need one to add to my collection with Rey Mysterio masks.
Ethan Page successfully defended his NXT North American Championship in a Fatal 4 Way match against Je’Von Evans, Rey Fenix, and Laredo Kid. This was a great match all around, everyone was flying all over the place and had a chance to really show off some incredible moves. Ethan Page did more high flying in this match just to keep up with the others than he’s done in any match of his life. Rey Fenix is so fun to watch, Je’Von Evans is a maniac in that ring and he’s still so young, I was new to Laredo Kid and he was certainly impressive, and I first saw Ethan Page wrestle years ago at a local independent show so it’s neat to see him where he is now. At the end of the match, Je’Von Evans hit his OG Cutter on Laredo, but Page tossed him out and hit his signature Twisted Grin on Laredo Kid for the 3 to retain the belt. The main event of Worlds Collide was amazing as well, Top 10 of the year contender so far for sure, as El Hijo del Vikingo took on Chad Gable for his AAA Mega Championship. This match saw heavy, high-powered offense performed by both men as we witnessed moonsaults, sitout powerbombs, 630 splashes, Mexican Destroyers, and more as they continued to pull the tricks out of the hat. Vikingo is an incredibly impressive wrestler, I don’t know if that is news to anyone but just an FYI, and as we know as WWE fans Chad Gable is an incredibly underrated worker himself, so this was just a banger. Vikingo retained the title in the end after a signature meteora and 630 splash combo onto that Gable sealed the deal. That was the end of Worlds Collide, hopefully not the last one though because it was a lot of fun.
Later that night we headed down the road to have some fun at the classic ‘Money in the Bank’ event. The show started off with the Women’s Money in the Bank as Alexa Bliss, Naomi, Giulia, Roxanne Perez, Rhea Ripley, and Stephanie Vaquer battled over the briefcase. I honestly didn’t know who I expected for this Money in the Bank match, I thought the most likely was Rhea Ripley, but I wouldn’t have bet a lot on it. I like Rhea and understand that she is certainly over (probably one of the most over people in the entire company), but I don’t think she needed this at all and would’ve rather seen most any of the other women win it just because it would feel more surprising. Well, I suppose that wish came true because at least to my surprise, Naomi picked up the huge win! I like Naomi and am incredibly happy for her, and I know a lot of people were actually saying her. I just wasn’t bought into the thought that WWE was actually going to give her her flowers here and I kind of figured one of the young and new talents, if not Rhea Ripley, were most likely. At the finish of the match, Naomi shoved a ladder over that Ripley and Bliss were racing up towards the briefcase and knocked them both into another ladder and off of the canvas, clearing the ring completely in the process before racing up the ladder herself and capturing the briefcase. Good for you girl, she deserves it. I’m assuming this means Bianca or Jade or both will be circling the title picture soon as well now that Naomi has the briefcase. Whether one of them takes the belt off her or she takes the belt off them, that is certainly happening. Next, we had a men’s Intercontinental Championship match as Dirty Dom faced off against Octagon (whom he challenged earlier in the day at Worlds Collide). This was a rather quick and straight-forward match just to get something else onto the card I’m assuming. Octagon picked up early momentum, but following a Liv Morgan distraction, Dom capitalized with a 619 and Frog Splash combo for the victory.
Lyra Valkyria defended her Women’s Intercontinental Championship against Becky Lynch next in what was probably, overall, the best pure wrestling match on the Money in the Bank card. I’m really enjoying these 2’s rivalry so far, they have great chemistry in the ring and on the mic and it’s giving us as fans a chance to see more of who Lyra Valkyria is as a character. I am a big Lyra fan, I’ve unashamedly said that for a while now, and not only because she’s my crush on the current roster, but because she’s excellent in the ring as well! That being said, I think this stuff with Becky is probably the most compelling stuff she’s done on the main roster so far and I’m loving it. Becky picked up the win here in rather cheap fashion after holding onto Lyra’s tights during a rollup attempt to get the 3 count, but not before some excellent back and forth between these 2 women. They seem to have each other’s number, neither can straight up beat the other one and have to revert to rollups and other tactics to get the job done and I like that because it keeps both women looking strong even in defeat. After the match, Lyra had to raise Becky’s hand in victory because of a prior agreed upon stipulation between the 2 and she did, but Becky just wouldn’t give it up and kept hounding her until finally Lyra had enough and hit her with a big German Suplex before exiting the ring. I’m assuming that means this rivalry will continue, and we will get a rubber match between the 2 now and I am all for that! The Men’s Money in the Bank followed up next as we saw Seth Rollins, Solo Sikoa, LA Knight, Andrade, El Grande Americano, and Penta battle it out for a chance at the briefcase. I had the exact opposite feelings about this match coming into the show as I did the Women’s MitB, the Women’s match felt pretty up in the air like any woman could walk out with the briefcase, but the Men’s MitB felt entirely too predictable because Seth felt like the easy and most logical choice and anyone could see that from a mile away….and Seth ended up winning it to no one’s surprise. I’m not upset by that, I am a huge Seth Rollins fan and loved seeing him win, but it wasn’t at all a shocker. Fatu finally turned on Solo during this match and cost him his chance to win so that was a highlight moment during the actual match itself, and Rollins new crew Bron and Bronson interfered and cleaned house to make way for The Visionary to get the case. I feel the most bad for LA Knight and Andrade in this situation though, LA Knight because he’s been so hot with the fans for so long now and doesn’t feel like he’s received a whole lot for it aside from continuing to be on TV, and Andrade because he’s such a great in ring wrestler and does so well in every opportunity they give him but he just doesn’t have that connection with the fans and doesn’t get a lot of true chances to shine or showcase himself as anything other than a great wrestler that loses a lot and I feel like he’s kind of stuck in that position now, like we’ve seen countless talent in the past get stuck in. I digress though, congrats to my boy Seth. It’ll be interesting to see how stuff plays out with him and his group in the coming months.
In the main event of the evening, the ‘Last Real Champion’ John Cena and Logan Paul teamed up against Cody Rhodes and the World Heavyweight Champion Jey Uso. This was a pretty fun and star-studded tag team match, but the real fun took place in the closing moments of the match. As it looked like Cena was about to hit Cody with the signature title shot to the head that he’s been doing during this heel run and get the win, a hooded and masked figure came from the crowd and attacked Cena before revealing themselves to be R-Truth! This has to be one of the biggest swerves in pro wrestling in a long time, if it really was a story, but I’m not convinced it was. For those that are unaware, R-Truth was let go from the company just a few weeks ago and fans were outraged because he was one of the most consistently fun characters on television that made us all smile through even the bleakest times in WWE, and it felt like they let him go in such random and unceremonious fashion and it was just sleazy and wrong. So, fans pushed back and have chanted “We Want Truth!” at random moments for the past few weeks and I was behind the movement, but in no way did I expect to see him back in the company again, especially not this soon. Then here he was to get his lick back from John Cena and leave all us fans with jaws on the floor in the process! Cody hit the Cross Rhodes moments after on a stunned John Cena and pinned him for the victory for Team Yeet. Good enough show overall, highlighted by Truth returning to close the show.
