On a recent episode of Talk is Jericho, Chris Jericho spoke about the origins of the Money in the Bank ladder match. For those who don’t know, Jericho is credited with coming up with the idea for the match. Below are some highlights (via 411Mania):
On the amount of talent that WWE had no plans for at Wrestlemania 21:
“Okay so Wrestlemania 2005, which I believe was in LA? I think? There was a group of guys going into Wrestlemania, all high-profile, kinda former World Champion type guys, that did not have a match for Wrestlemania. It was such talents as Edge, Chris Benoit, Kane, myself, maybe RVD? I’m not sure, something like that. There’s a bunch of guys. Shelton Benjamin was one of the cats that was in that. And nobody had a program or a match.”
On what WWE originally came up with:
“So they were trying to think of something for everybody to do and they were coming up with all these dumb ideas. Like one of the ideas was for me and Benoit and Edge to have a three-way submission match. And I said, ‘well that’s super boring. A three-way submission match, the only way you can win is a submission, blah blah blah. It’d be kinda boring.’”
On the idea that he pitched:
“So I came up with the idea to do a match, like a ladder match. A six-way ladder match. And Brian Gewirtz, who was a good writer at the time said, ‘well what’s at stake?’ So I said, ‘well why don’t you have a contract where the winner gets a title shot the next night?’ Then Brian said, ‘Well, why don’t you make it you can use it any time over the following year and you can cash it in at any time?’ And so we took that to Vince and Vince agreed, loved the idea. His only concession was that the contract had to be in a briefcase. Knowing how Vince is, maybe he wanted the people to see it rather than just a piece of paper hanging there. Like some kind of an actual trophy. And maybe he thought the briefcase was something you could actually carry and use. So it was a really cool kind of a three-way invention of this match because even though Vince’s little thing was just the briefcase, the briefcase has become synonymous with the show.”
On a related note, check out the best Money in the Bank ladder matches according to star ratings.