The Untold Story Of The First-Ever WWE Money In The Bank Ladder Match

Implemented all the way back in 2005, Money in the Bank's impact goes beyond the mere institution of the match itself - the outcome sets up the tease of a major payoff down the road, creating genuine suspense and anticipation for a star-making moment that could occur at any time. 

The toting of the magical briefcase has become a fairly common sight in modern-day WWE, but it had to have an origin point. In fact, the 2005 invention of multi-person scrambles for a suspended briefcase ended up solving a few major problems; one short term for an established headliner, and one longer term for a star on the rise.

This is the true story of the first-ever WWE Money in the Bank Ladder Match. 

On January 8, 2006, fans in Albany, New York were never more grateful to hear Alter Bridge in their entire lives. It was on that day that Edge, winner of the inaugural Money in the Bank Ladder Match nine months earlier, briskly handed the special briefcase to Vince McMahon, before storming to the ring at New Year's Revolution, where a battered, blood-soaked John Cena lay vulnerable.

For the first time ever, the eyes of the wrestling world witnessed what has become known as a "cash-in" match. As a highly vocal part of the audience wanted nothing more than to bask in the public humiliation of polarising WWE titleholder John Cena, the gatecrashing Edge got arguably the second-loudest response of his entire career. 

In less than two minutes, Edge demolished what was left of the reigning WWE Champion, spearing him into oblivion to capture the first of 11 WWE world titles. The victory was fitting for the opportunistic villain that was 'The Rated R Superstar' and deserving for the unquestioned 'future main eventer' that had been Adam Copeland's label for several years.

Yet, a year earlier, nobody could have predicted this exact scene. In early 2005, Edge was finishing up a rivalry with Shawn Michaels that had begun at the previous autumn's Taboo Tuesday pay-per-view. At the time, Edge's character had taken a rather bitter tack, going from face to heel not so much through treacherous acts, but an unfulfilled sense of entitlement.

Fans in his native Toronto booed Edge out of the building at the 2004 SummerSlam. While he wasn't the only babyface to receive surprising jeers that night, Edge's 2004 to that point had cast him as this weird anomaly, this sort of loosely defined character that didn't generally provoke such a strong response.

Upon returning from a 13-month injury layoff that Spring, Edge was moved from SmackDown to the Raw brand, as this highly intense, tightly-wound babyface with this vengeful mindset. This was in stark contrast to the character he'd previously played on SmackDown - a cool, calm, collected good guy with an unparalleled knack for delivering humorous putdowns to the brand's heels, while ably going shot for shot with them in big matches.

That was a likeable Edge, but this more vigilante-minded Edge came off a little too put on. Nobody would dispute the idea of Edge being a badass, but character-wise, the Edge everybody knew was more well-defined as the guy who embarrassed Kurt Angle with minimal effort.

For years, Edge was considered a "can't-miss", an undisputed future world champion with the look, the personality, and the talent to plant his feet at the top of the promotional mountain for the long haul. However, in this period, there was just something missing.

World championship gold continued to elude Edge in the early part of 2005. He was the first man to exit the cage in an Elimination Chamber Match to crown a new World Heavyweight Champion at New Year’s Revolution, and rival Shawn Michaels soundly defeated him in a Street Fight at the end of February. Michaels then immediately transitioned into a feud with SmackDown star Kurt Angle that would lead to one of the greatest WrestleMania matches of all time.

But Edge? Five weeks out from the show of shows, he had no tangible rival for the big dance.

The same applied to Chris Jericho, whose house show marriages were varied in this period. Matches with the likes of Chris Benoit, Muhammad Hassan, Christian, and even Edge filled out his personal schedule, but none of them had the momentum at the time to power a WrestleMania showdown.

In fact, WrestleMania 21 was kind of a weird card in general. The Triple H-Batista feud was the most well-established at the time, while then-popular John Cena facing the contemptible JBL wrote itself. Inter-brand feuds pitting Michaels against Angle and legend-killing Randy Orton against streak-holding Undertaker had their own allure. Beyond that, Raw and SmackDown each bore a serious lack of compelling rivalries within their respective rosters.

Jericho wasn't the only proven commodity that lacked any discernible WrestleMania direction, but he was one who at least feared he could miss the main WrestleMania card entirely. Over the preceding years, you had Matt Hardy missing WrestleMania 20, Christian missing 19, and Big Show missing 18. While Jericho was certainly better positioned than those talents, he was nonetheless concerned about what was on the cards for him as far as WrestleMania 21 went - as well as if anything was on the cards.

In what turned out to be a very important phone call, Jericho reached out to good friend and influential WWE writer Brian Gewirtz. During the call, Jericho lamented his current lack of direction, perhaps hoping that Gewirtz could help engineer a way for him into the graces of WrestleMania's main card. As it turned out, in Gewirtz's copious notes, he'd written of an idea that would stand to benefit Jericho, Edge, and other talented individuals currently on the outside looking in. It wasn't called Money in the Bank, though. In its original form, the concept was a "Hollywood Dream" ladder match.

Since WrestleMania 21 was the one in which WrestleMania "went Hollywood", Gewirtz obviously fashioned the "Hollywood" part of the name around the theme of the night. As for the "Dream" portion, that was something a little more creative. As Gewirtz initially concocted the idea sometime earlier, the match was going to be a means to an end.

WWE needed a way to facilitate their plans for an ECW reunion that June (what would come to be known as "One Night Stand"), and through Gewirtz's vision, this match would be the driving force toward that reunion. That's because for the "Dream" half of the billing, the winner of the match would have any "dream" of their choosing fulfilled.

When Gewirtz first began fleshing out the gimmick match, his idea was to have Rob Van Dam win the ladder war. RVD's wish would be for the return of ECW, thus paving the road to One Night Stand.

Unfortunately, Van Dam suffered a major leg injury at the dawn of 2005, which would sideline 'The Whole F'n Show' for around one year. While RVD wouldn't be around to fulfil Gewirtz's vision, the writer did end up pitching the idea to Vince anyway, since a number of wrestlers needed some kind of vessel onto WrestleMania.

As Gewirtz reported back to Jericho, while the chairman didn't dismiss the overall concept, Vince thought the prize was pretty stupid. Gewirtz and Jericho brainstormed together, and it was Y2J who proposed having the winner get a world title match the next night on Raw. Gewirtz modified that into a world title shot redeemable any time within a one-year window, to create longer-lasting intrigue.

Vince McMahon was sold on the concept, but added one more personal touch: he wanted the championship contract to be represented via a briefcase. That is how we got the Money in the Bank Ladder Match.

Yet, it almost wasn't so. According to Chris Jericho, after Vince McMahon approved the match, he changed his mind a few days later and instead wanted to book Jericho, Edge, and Chris Benoit in a three-way submission match. Jericho and the others managed to persuade McMahon to go with the original plan, reasoning that it was a much more exciting attraction for a WrestleMania.

Joining Jericho in the original field was the aforementioned Benoit. Though still near the top of the card, Benoit was no longer vying for the world title as he had one year earlier. Nonetheless, his considerable talents could certainly boost a match of this type.

He and Jericho were rescued by the Money in the Bank creation, as was the man Jericho wrestled at the previous year's WrestleMania, Christian. 'Captain Charisma' seemed like he was on the verge of breaking out, due to his humorous promos, as well as his relatively new entrance, heralded by a violin-laden alt-metal ballad.

Intercontinental Champion Shelton Benjamin also joined the fray, treading water following a tepid feud with a heel-turned Maven. Though Benjamin's awing agility was tailor-made for a ladder-filled spectacle, this would mark the third straight WrestleMania that there was no Intercontinental Title match.

The least aerodynamic participant was Kane, coming off of a questionable feud with Gene Snitsky, and an even more questionable connection with Lita. There were rumours at one time that Kane was going to team with Undertaker at WrestleMania to face Snitsky and Heidenreich but that match, obviously, never happened. 

Then, of course, there was Edge. Adam Copeland seemed to have all the upside, promise and talent in the world. But as far as getting to that final level, there was a missing component. Something was absent, and it was preventing Edge from becoming a top guy. 

He ultimately found that component, albeit in very bizarre, and highly unexpected, circumstances.

It began strangely enough at the end of February, when Matt Hardy (who was sidelined after having knee surgery the previous Summer) posted on his own message board that he asked an admin to remove all photos of longtime girlfriend Lita from his personal website. He then encouraged fans who ran into Lita at appearances to ask her about the situation. Hardy also went on to write that he hated having his trust broken.

Within days, the story was out: Lita had been having an affair with Edge. Hardy and Edge's then-wife Lisa found out what was going on, leading to an escalating situation where the details quickly became public knowledge.

The March 7 episode of Raw emanated from Hardy country, Raleigh, North Carolina. To demonstrate the immense power of the internet rumour mill, fans at the RBC Center fired off chants like "You Screwed Matt" and "You Screwed Lita" during Edge's match with Jericho.

Talk about incredible timing: two months after injuring her knee at New Year's Revolution, Lita made her return as Christy Hemme's "coach" for the latter's match with Women's Champion Trish Stratus at WrestleMania 21. Though the surprise garnered a positive response to start, Lita was quickly showered with boos during the remainder of the segment.

Public sentiment sided with Hardy in the situation, and the heat upon Edge and Lita was inescapable. The tryst and its ugly fallout remained headline fodder, and was more of a talking point than any of the written storylines.

For the time being, Lita pressed on as a babyface, seconding Hemme while no acknowledgement was made of the contradictory boos. For Edge, however, those boos were hardly contradictory. In fact, the controversy inadvertently gave Edge the shading he needed to become a complete character. Edge had found his edge.

The searing hatred that met him in the weeks ahead was there as he walked the aisle inside LA's Staples Center the night of WrestleMania 21. Christian, the only other heel of the sextet, received nowhere near the vitriol that his one-time kayfabe brother earned under those bright WrestleMania lights.

What followed was arguably the greatest ladder match since the heyday of TLC. It's also perhaps the greatest singular Money in the Bank Ladder Match ever, as while there have been excellent examples among the chronology, the brisk pace, innovation, and lack of contrivance steered the original into the realm of true WrestleMania all-timers.

You had Benoit giving Jericho a throwing German suplex, all the while Jericho clutched a steel ladder. Kane managed to severely stunt Benoit's overall effectiveness by crunching his arm between ladder halves, giving "The Crippler" an injury that he would sell all the way to the finish line. Edge and Christian briefly reunited, flattening Kane with a ladder con-chair-to.

The real star of the match was Benjamin. It was going to be hard to outdo the ladder-top Exploder that he gave Edge, but he managed to do so by running hands-free up the rungs of a leaned-over ladder to clothesline Jericho off the primary ladder, just as Y2J was about to win.

Benoit played the role of valiant warrior as the match ground down, fighting back with only one arm to thoroughly incapacitate Kane. But just as Benoit had an apparently unimpeded climb to the briefcase, Edge arrived on the scene with a steel chair, coldly smashing Benoit's arm to smithereens, while the Los Angeles crowd reacted with anger.

The boos only intensified as Edge made his way up the rungs, and somehow grew more apoplectic as he liberated the briefcase from the skyhook.

Edge was now the first-ever Mr. Money in the Bank, and with that freshly-coined nickname, another apropos label was inspired: 'The Ultimate Opportunist'.

Fans empathising with Matt Hardy's predicament continued directing their anger toward Edge - even more so the week after Mania when WWE released Hardy from the company. Now more than ever, Edge was the public avatar for an ugly situation, one that many fans felt was handled extremely poorly.

When Lita turned heel in order to join Edge in a line-blurring on-screen relationship, the couple only grew more detestable. WWE capitalised on all of the unplanned developments by making Edge the most ruthless and callous villain since Mr McMahon's prime.

The next great main event star had his hook, at long last. Briefcase in hand, Edge pushed his way through a summer feud with a vengeful, returning Hardy, before going on to humiliate and batter Ric Flair at every opportunity. By the time the Flair feud rolled around, the venomous crowd response toward Edge had greatly diminished. Sure, he was still a sworn heel that earned the appropriate response, but the vehement hatred had long evaporated.

The heat from the real-life melodrama had died down, but not before Edge had added the missing ingredient, that conspicuous intangible, to his star profile.

When Edge made that grand entrance pre-cash-in, he became a bonafide made man. The virtual squash that followed was the christening of his legend, following nearly a year of configuring the most supreme version of the Edge character.

None of this happens without the choices made away from the cameras. To another degree, the big moment doesn't play out the way that it does without the invention of the Money in the Bank Ladder Match.

In the years since, the match has remained an annual staple, spawning its own spin-off pay-per-view in 2010. More than 20 different individuals have pulled down the career-altering briefcase, with varying degrees of success and memorability in their cash-ins.

Yes, some have left a deeper impression than others. Wins for true fan favourites like Rob Van Dam and Dean Ambrose were made possible through Money in the Bank victories. The cash-ins by Dolph Ziggler and Seth Rollins produced ungodly crowd responses when their scenes finally played out.

It's hard to beat an original, though. Edge set the stage for all cash-ins that followed, and it is indeed a very high bar to reach. There was no template in place before Edge rushed the ring that night in Albany, but his way remains the idealised example to equal.

Edge doesn't get that exact moment in the sun without Brian Gewirtz's scrawled-out idea, nor a somewhat-desperate Chris Jericho's yearning to be part of WrestleMania 21 in some form. Nor does it happen without Edge altering his public image through a few unsavoury headlines, or WWE's willingness to make the absolute best of a bad scenario.

Through a borderline last-resort pitch, relative tabloid fodder, and the greatness of the original match itself, Money in the Bank's overall formula and expectations were shaped for years to come. While forged through several difficult circumstances, all that's been difficult in the ensuing years is trying to outdo the acclaim for that original.