Published: 4 seconds ago by Liam | Last Updated: 4 seconds ago by Liam
Liam has been reporting & analyzing wrestling news since early 2018. Immersed in wrestling for 18 years, he has over 11,000 published articles and led WrestleTalk.com’s coverage from 2022 until mid 2026.
WWE
WWE ended up changing its original plans for the winners of both the men’s and women’s Money in the Bank ladder matches this past weekend.
The news emerged today that the men’s ladder match, which was won by Penta, was originally supposed to be won by Bron Breakker, and the women’s, which ended up going to Tiffany Stratton, was originally planned to go to Roxanne Perez.
But why exactly did WWE make those decisions?
On the men’s side, the answer is a pretty easy one – Penta is red hot and WWE wants to capitalize.
Penta has become a true main event star
Penta has shone ever since his WWE debut in January 2025, with his matches, his charisma, his push and his presentation all adding up to make him one of the big AEW to WWE success stories.
All of that picked up even more a few weeks ago coming out of his match against Roman Reigns in Mexico City, which elevated Penta to a true main event level star, rather than being someone in the upper midcard who was capable of a few main events here and there.
WWE’s attempts to penetrate the Mexico market with its AAA brand are no doubt a factor, but even outside of that, Penta has been a shining light worldwide throughout his WWE run.
His custom briefcase – which had actual fireworks coming out of it on Raw this week – is going to sell loads of replicas on WWE Shop, far more than a custom Breakker briefcase would have. That’s a very strong factor that the company likely considered, but it shouldn’t be the decisive one.
It’s not just WWE management that are high on Penta, but even higher-ups in TKO have been talking about how well he’s doing, which shows he’s not just impressing on the wrestling side, but on the business side as well, which in the current landscape, is probably the most important thing.
WWE needs to be careful with Bron Breakker
The unfortunate casualty here is Bron Breakker, and it isn’t the first time.
Earlier this year, Breakker was planned to win the Royal Rumble match, which would have guaranteed him a WWE Championship match at WrestleMania – instead, that ended up going to Roman Reigns due to the heavy reshuffling of plans that was going on around both the WWE and World Heavyweight Titles.
Now, Breakker has seen a pretty much guaranteed world title win via Money in the Bank go by the wayside as well.
It’s clear that WWE wants to break Breakker through to the upper level of talent in the company, but there doesn’t seem to be any rush to do it anymore, and two years ago – even one year ago – it seemed like there was.
Perhaps the emergence of Oba Femi who has pretty much lapped every newcomer has slowed everything down for Breakker and now there isn’t the urgency that there was initially.
The problem is, WWE can’t fall into the trap of thinking it can wait forever – who’s to say Breakker doesn’t get frustrated with his position and decide to leave the next time his contract comes up, or who’s to say he doesn’t suffer an unfortunate injury that puts paid to any major success he might be able to have.
It isn’t enough for him to have supposedly impressive performances. When you look at the history books in 10, 20, 30 years, it won’t say “Penta won but Bron Breakker was the standout” – it’ll just say “Penta won.”
We saw what happened with Sheamus and the Intercontinental Championship – he never got to fulfill that story because WWE held off and held off, and eventually, he decided to part ways.
Penta is no doubt a good choice for the Money in the Bank winner this year, but the company needs to be careful not to stall too long with Breakker.
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