WWE Money in the Bank 2017 review: What we learned, takeaways, future projections

WWE Championship Match

Jinder Mahal (c) vs. Randy Orton

What we learned: We learned here that you still can’t hinder the Jinder.

The Jinder Mahal experiment rolls on. After WWE attempted to fill more time by announcing the presence of a few legends, including Cowboy Bob Orton, the WWE Championship match got underway and this was a much better match between Jinder Mahal and Randy Orton than we got at Backlash. Orton did a great job of selling the leg injury after being tossed from the ring and Jinder did an equally great job of attacking it. He was much more aggressive on Sunday night and actually looked like a champion for the first time since winning the belt. He had sort of a Kevin Owens-like demeanor to him in this match and it worked well. Throwing in the Figure Four with Ric Flair at ringside was a stroke of genius.

Naturally, Orton fought back to get the upper hand and hit an RKO but the Singh Brothers pulled Jinder’s foot on the rope, and after Orton pleaded with Mike Chioda not to disqualify Mahal, the brothers were banned from ringside. But before leaving, they attacked Bob Orton — not quite sure why those other legends were down there if they weren’t going to help — which set Randy off and he unleashed another beating on the outside. I guess Chioda didn’t like the countout finish from earlier in the night either because Orton was on the outside for quite a while and I don’t even remember hearing a count at all. You knew what was coming when Orton got back into the ring and we got the exact same finish we had in their previous encounter. It was another case of taking a decent match and ruining it. It was lazy booking and did nothing to help anyone involved.

What’s next: Mahal is going to have to deal with the new Money in the Bank winner — they already teased a confrontation following the pay-per-view — but this program with Orton is far from finished. Orton will likely ask for or earn one more shot (perhaps in a 2-on-1 with the Singh Brothers) at the WWE Championship and they’ll go at it at least one more time, likely with the stipulation that nobody can be at ringside. What are the chances of Jinder actually taking the title all the way to SummerSlam? That’s the second-biggest show on the WWE schedule and it will be interesting to see if Vince has enough faith in him (or wants to sell SummerSlam in India) to ride this wave all the way to Brooklyn.