WWE returned to New Orleans, LA on Saturday for the 2026 edition of Money In The Bank. It was a night of crazy falls and car-crash ladder matches. There's already been a thorough account of what happened, which can be found over on the WWE Money In The Bank 2026 results page, and the Wrestling Inc. Staff has already explained what they loved, and what they didn't over on the Money In The Bank Loved & Hated column.Now, all that's left is the Winners and the Losers from Saturday's show. The winners were obvious, like Mr. Money In The Bank Penta, or Je'Von Evans, while the losers were a little subtler, like Roman Reigns or Tiffany Stratton. I'll explain as the column goes on. The comment section will be open for your own picks for winers and losers.Let's get down to who looked good and who very much didn't on Saturday.
Je'Von Evans is going to live forever. Sometimes, a ladder match participant has a hair-brained idea for immortality, and Je'Von Evans, hurtling off a ladder, through the roof of an ambulance, is going to be one of those images that live on in wrestling eternity.It was an insane image. Evans really made an impression in his first, and likely not last, entry in the Money In The Bank Ladder Match. He is a deeply unwell young man, with seemingly no care for his own bodily well being. He will go far in these matches.Wrestling is an odd genre, as it has you rooting for things like the young Evans nearly ending his own short life in an attempt to entertain the fans, but I am simply not ethically strong enough to not hoot and holler as he puts his life on the line. He's the right kind of crazy for WWE.
I am, simply put, tired of Roman Reigns, and based on the reaction on Saturday, a lot of the WWE Universe is tired of him too. LA Knight is not exactly a star of electricity. He is a very servicable upper-midcard talent, and one who is picking up a pretty strong, earnest following.On Saturday, Knight had a crowd with the right mix of cult appeal and Roman Reigns fatigue, that you could tell the room wanted Knight to find a way to sneak away with the title. Reigns's inevitable showdown with Oba Femi is still months away, and the company is spinning its wheels to such a degree that Knight has become a legitimate contender. I get the vibe that Knight is loved simply because he's not Roman Reigns.Reigns is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Wrestling was tired of him, so he went to Hollywood, which sent him back to wrestling. He is an uncanny valley star, not popular enough to be mainstream, too omnipresent in WWE, and Saturday's performance just cemented that in my eyes.
Penta feels like one of the few wrestlers who could realistically dethrone Roman Reigns. There was a brief moment where it looked like he could beat the World Heavyweight Champion in Mexico City, but it was not to be. Still, Penta helped deliver one of Reigns's best matches ever, and Saturday WWE made it clear how much they appreciate his effort.It feels like Penta could very much be a man of the moment, and winning Money In The Bank promises that the moment will not be passing any time soon. It was a win that made me audibly say "Wow, good for him," on my couch.Simply put, Penta has been too popular for too long to not have a moment like this one. The match was filled with the Bron Breakkers, and Trick Williamses of the world, set to break out at any moment, but after a long time flying under the radar, Penta is getting his time in the spotlight.
The Women's Money In The Bank Ladder Match was one of the most unfocused, unpolished MITB matches I've ever seen. There were women diving off ladders, barely caught as they crash to the floor below, haphazardly assembled ladder bridges that sent wrestlers nearly tumbling to the hospital, and to top it all off, it feels like they picked the least interesting choice for the winner.We've done Tiffany Stratton/Money In The Bank before, and it went fine, as fine as it could go, but I simply don't understand reheating 2024's nachos. That she won such a shambolic match is salt in the wound.As always, I hope to be proven wrong by Stratton. I hope to be eating my words by the time she cashes in, but this felt like the moment to really make a new star in any of the other women in the match. Sure, there's always next year, but that's a long time, and by then the make-up win for whoever should've won this year will obfuscate whoever should win next year. It starts to snowball. I hope to be eating crow by WrestleMania.
