Calling Spots: Money In The Bank 2025
Time to cash-in on these MITB predictions!
Back in Summer 2024 when I was brainstorming ideas for this Substack, I knew I wanted to include a series about professional wrestling. WWE and WCW had been a part of my life throughout my childhood, and I’ve since made a comeback to this world within the past few years. I like to think professional wrestling (and also Fantasmic! at Disneyland) were the start of my love for live theater. But that’s another story for another day.
Professional wrestling is serialized storytelling. Two television shows every week (three if you count the developmental brand, NXT) where characters interact, argue, feud, and fight. The easiest, and most common, form of media to compare it to is the soap opera. Hours and hours of content each week with no conclusion. The story just continues. That means wrestling history is vast and deep.
All of these storylines eventually lead to monthly Premium Live Events (PLEs) — a big spectacle event where matches often result in massive story turns and character development. The biggest PLE of them all is Wrestlemania — now a two-night event with over a dozen matches held in enormous stadiums around the United States.
Now, I consider myself a narrative-based person. I watch a fair amount of television and movies, so I’d like to think I can spot the narrative bread crumbs left by the writing team in all of these storylines. That’s where Calling Spots was born. I watch the two main WWE television shows each week, and make predictions on the PLE match outcomes based on the stories being told. Am I always successful? Hell no. But is it a fun exercise nonetheless? Yeet!
Let’s preview the upcoming WWE Premium Live Event, Money In The Bank, and make some match predictions based on the ongoing stories being told each week on Monday Night Raw and Friday Night Smackdown.
THE UNDERCARD
Let’s look back and see how our predictions fared at Backlash 2025.
United States Championship Fatal 4-Way Match
Jacob Fatu (c) vs. Drew McIntyre vs. Damian Priest vs. LA Knight
Prediction: The Samoan Werewolf becomes The Samoan Dogwalker as he survives and thrives in his first title defense. Yadadamean?
Result: ✅ The Bloodline now includes The Philippines! This is my first introduction to Jeff Cobb aka JC Mateo, so I’m interested to see more from him. Jacob Fatu, on the other hand, is not interested at all. But hey, a win is a win.
Women’s Intercontinental Championship Match
Lyra Valkyria (c) vs. Becky Lynch
Prediction: Becky proves she’s The Man by besting Lyra in this first matchup.
Result: ❌ Excellent, excellent match. Kind of a weird finish? Becky still proves she’s at the top of her game, and Lyra comes out looking incredible. Felt like too many false finishes for my liking, but it all plays into the fact that Becky did everything she could to beat Lyra and none of it worked.
Men’s Intercontinental Championship Match
Dominik Mysterio (c) vs. Penta
Prediction: Dirty Dom has zero fear and successfully defends his title.
Result: ✅ Shenanigans a plenty, but Dom retains with the help of Judgment Day and El Grande Americano (and, importantly, not Finn Bálor).
Pat McAfee vs. Gunther
Prediction: Gunther wins. We all lose.
Result: ✅ So, this was all so that McAfee and Cole could earn Gunther’s respect? I hate everything.
Undisputed WWE Championship Match
John Cena (c) vs. Randy Orton
Prediction: Tomorrow our childhood dies. Life isn’t fair. Winners write the history books. John Cena doesn’t lie. He’s the last real champion.
Result: ✅ Does WWE not employ enough referees? Was Charles Robinson already on his way to the next town? Aldis needs to do better making sure he has enough referees in the building. The shoulder block countered into the RKO was a thing of beauty.
Final Tally
4-for-5.
I still don’t like the Becky loss, but I understand it at least. I’ll take this as a strong start to our season.
THE MAIN EVENT
Women’s Money In The Bank Ladder Match
I have the hardest time predicting Money In The Bank matches — even more so than Royal Rumbles or Elimination Chambers. Let’s take at look at the past two Women’s MITB winners to try and gain some sense of a pattern. In both cases, the briefcase was used to slingshot the winner from the midcard immediately to the top of the roster.
Last year, the two women’s champions were Rhea Ripley (Women’s World Champ) and Bayley (Women’s WWE Champ). At the time, they were really playing up the Bayley and Naomi friendship, so I thought there was a chance Naomi could win the briefcase to put some strain on their relationship.
What I didn’t anticipate was WWE putting an absolute rocket on Tiffany Stratton mere months after her main roster debut. Tiffy hadn’t even been paired with Nia Jax yet, so Tiffy winning didn’t even seem like it had a built-in story yet. This is all to say that literally anything is possible when it comes to potential winners.
In 2023, Becky Lynch was the big name involved in the match. People were convinced she would win the briefcase considering she had never won the match before. Instead, WWE made a great play by having Iyo Sky literally climb over the back of her Damage CTRL leader, Bayley, to win the match and thus making her an immediate star.
There are a few parallels for this year’s match. Rhea Ripley is the big name this year, and is in the Becky Lynch position seeing as how she has never won a MITB briefcase. Of course, she’s Mami and doesn’t really need the briefcase to get herself in the title picture, but it’ll still look nice on her resume.
Stephanie Vaquer, Giulia, and Roxanne Perez are all HUGE new additions to the main roster. Any one of them could be in the main event picture today, and I would have no issue with it. They are all in the Tiffany Stratton position. If any of them win and cash in, they could make history by becoming champion in the shortest amount of time of joining the main roster. And all three would deserve it.
And then there are the two veterans — Naomi and Alexa Bliss. Naomi is currently in an excellent program with both Jade Cargill and Bianca Belair. Personally, I think adding the briefcase into that story just dilutes what those women have been crafting for months. Alexa has been messing with Charlotte Flair in various backstage segments for weeks now. Not sure where that’s going, but it currently doesn’t seem to involve the MITB briefcase.
Lastly, let’s look at the current women’s champions — Iyo Sky (Women’s World Champ) and Tiffany Stratton (Women’s WWE Champ). If we assume the Raw women will go after Iyo and the Smackdown women will go after Tiffy, I like a Raw woman winning this match. They’ve already given us a Stephanie Vaquer versus Iyo Sky match (that was rudely interrupted), and Mami versus Iyo is a well-established feud.
Prediction: I like the trend of putting the briefcase on a rookie, so let’s give it to Roxanne Perez. Plus, that adds some more tension to the Judgment Day and Liv Morgan storyline.
Men’s Money In The Bank Ladder Match
This one absolutely feels like Seth Rollins’ match to lose. He’s a gigantic name in this match, and he’s got two insurance policies known as Bron Breakker and “Big” Bronson Reed. There is no reason for him not to win his second MITB briefcase. That is if CM Punk and Sami Zayn decide to not involve themselves in this match. Both have expressed desperation to keep Rollins away from that dangerous contract. Perhaps they will spoil the party.
Let’s look at some of the other options just for fun. Solo Sikoa could win, which would be hilarious to see him run around with that briefcase while Jacob Fatu gives him the side-eye. He could theoretically then cash-in his contract on Jacob for the United States title, which would be absolutely wild.
LA Knight is a future MITB winner for sure. His character is practically made for it with the amount of crowd support this man has sustained for three years. I’m just not convinced that he’s the guy to take the title off the current Undisputed WWE Champion, John Cena.
Then there’s the three midcarders who could all benefit from a bump to the main event scene. Penta is the hottest of this group, but he seems constrained to the Intercontinental Title picture at this point. The ironic thing about El Grande Americano is that he can beat luchadors, but he’s had some difficulty beating non-luchadors. That’s Chad Gable’s area of expertise. So the fact that Americano is in this match and not Gable makes me think he’s not gonna win that contract.
And last is my favorite underrated wrestler in this match, which is Andrade. The man just knows how to put on a fantastic match every single time he is out there. Last year’s MITB match spawned that Best-of-7 series with Carmelo Hayes that culminated at the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royale several months later. Unfortunately, Andrade has the LA Knight problem since he’s on Smackdown and I don’t see him being the one to dethrone Cena.
The biggest tell of this match is that Jey Uso has to defend his World Heavyweight title against Gunther this coming Monday on Raw. No matter who wins this MITB match, it seems clear that Jey’s title run is in serious jeopardy come this Monday night.
Prediction: Seth “Freakin” Rollins establishes his dominance and likely becomes your new champion by Monday.
John Cena & Logan Paul vs. Cody Rhodes & Jey Uso
John Cena is here to ruin wrestling, which scares me into believing he and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named will eek out a victory here. On the bright side, at least Cena isn’t teaming with Travis Scott?
The Cena and Paul team-up feels weak to me. John is openly praising Paul for his social media likes while simultaneously promising to ruin wrestling by helping him become World Heavyweight Champion. Sure they could cheat their way to victory, but as a narrative story beat it doesn’t add anything of value.
Prediction: The former tag team champs, Team Yeet, finally notch a win against big bad Cena.
Women’s Intercontinental Championship Match
Lyra Valkyria (c) vs. Becky Lynch
The Battle for Ireland: Round 2!
2 Battle 2 Irish: This time it’s personal!1
I’m so happy Lyra and Becky get to run this one back. Like I said, I really loved their last match, and now the stakes are even higher. If Lyra wins, Becky can never challenge for the Women’s Intercontinental Championship again. If Becky wins, Lyra will have to raise Becky’s hand in victory.
I was confident that Becky was going to beat Lyra at Backlash. She’s a spurned veteran who is looking to prove herself by beating a young superstar on the rise. Only that didn’t happen. Lyra literally beat Becky “with her eyes closed” — a pretty badass line that Lyra then used on Becky during on promo on Raw. If Lyra beats Becky again I have to imagine that’s it, the feud is over. Which makes me believe we’re going to have a new Women’s Intercontinental Champion on our hands.
Prediction: Lyra had a great run as the inaugural champ, but it’s time for The Man to takeover and get her hand raised.
Those are my called spots. Tell me yours! Who do you think is walking out on top at Money In The Bank?
I’ll keep workshopping this.