The biggest failure in Money in the Bank History
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| Source: wwe.com |
Damien Sandow. A 30-year-old talent that was fresh to the main roster and ready to blow fresh air into the WWE. His victory against the likes of Cesaro, Dean Ambrose, Wade Barrett and Cody Rhodes came as a little shock to everyone. Sandow, who was on a quest to become the intellectual savior of the unwashed masse, was an interesting heel character that reminded older fans of The Genius, a character portrayed by Lanny Poffo in the 1980s.
Damien Sandow was completed by great skills on the microphone, solid in-ring technique and gallons of charisma. Sandow seemed like he could legit be the next big thing in WWE. What went wrong?
After the 'Uncrowned World Heavyweight Champion ', as Sandow quickly began calling himself, won the briefcase, the euphoria began to grow. Especially when WWE put him in a feud with his now former Tag Team partner Cody Rhodes, who turned babyface and chased down Damien Sandow at every possible second. The rivalry reached it's high point when Cody Rhodes threw the blue SmackDown Money in the Bank briefcase into the Gulf of Mexico.
Two weeks later Sandow would introduce a new personalised version of the Money in the Bank briefcase that came with handcuffs, so Cody Rhodes was unable to steal it again.
After his feud with Cody Rhodes ended the WWE went to a method of booking a Mr. Money in the Bank, or Sir Money in the Bank in Sandow's case, they have been using for years but does not really make sense. Sandow, holder of the Money in the Bank briefcase which guarantees him a WORLD title shot, began losing to everyone on the roster, including lower tier stars. And while WWE was destroying Sandow's credibility the company decided on something that would end all hopes Damien Sandow becoming a World Champion: The official end of the brand-split and the unification of both the WWE and World Heavyweight Championships in a match between WWE Champion Randy Orton and World Heavyweight Champion John Cena.
Why fans across the world rebelled against this WWE was focused on pushing threw with this idea, something they would change back only three years later.
WWE later showed a segment on RAW which had Orton and Cena signing the contract for the unification match with a bunch of former world champions, all not very happy to be there, filling the ring. The crowd decided to strongly chant for the also present Daniel Bryan instead for a match they have seen a thousand times and that would end up being the final nail in the coffin for more opportunies.
As you can already see, Damien Sandow was not involved in this segment. With the decision made the discontinue the very championship Sandow was going to cash-in on at some point and WWE unwilling to crown Sandow a WWE World Heavyweight Champion, the name the unified title would receive later, he was the odd-man out.
Damien Sandow cashed in on World Heavyweight Champion John Cena in October 2013 on RAW, atleast he had a great match while doing so, but he had to do the job. This made him the second ever man to unsuccessfully cash-in his contract. The first one? His opponent John Cena.
So this wasn't really due to Sandow's lack of being a world champion material, but the feeling was making him unified world champion of the biggest promotion inthe world was just a little bit to much. Unfortunatley Sandow never reached these heights again. His career highlight came in 2014, when he, after months of being a brilliant comedy-act with The Miz as his stunt-double 'Damien Mizdow', won the WWE Tag Team Championship alongside Miz.
After dropping the titles and turning babyface against The Miz, WWE never 'cashed in' on Damien Sandow, who was still beloved by fans. In 2016 he was released by WWE. After a short stint with TNA/Impact, he left the wrestling business. An absolute shame and something that you can not blame the talent for. Different decision around him just moved him into a position where he was not needed anymore. This is not only the biggest Money in the Bank failure in history, this is also the ruining of what could have been an amazing pro-wrestling career.
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