Chris Jericho Explains How He Came Up With Money in the Bank, Reveals WWE’s Original Plan For Participants

In the latest episode of Talk is Jericho, Chris Jericho spoke about coming up with the idea for the original Money in the Bank ladder match at Wrestlemania 21 and what WWE’s original plans for a lot of the participants were. The match, which was won by Edge, also featured Jericho, Chris Benoit, Christian, Kane and Shelton Benjamin. Here are highlights:

On the amount of talent that WWE had no plans for at the event: “Okay so Wrestlemania 2005, which I believe was in LA? I think? There was a group of guys going into Wrestlemania, all high-profile, kinda former World Champion type guys, that did not have a match for Wrestlemania. It was such talents as Edge, Chris Benoit, Kane, myself, maybe RVD? I’m not sure, something like that. There’s a bunch of guys. Shelton Benjamin was one of the cats that was in that. And nobody had a program or a match.”

On what WWE came up with: “So they were trying to think of something for everybody to do and they were coming up with all these dumb ideas. Like one of the ideas was for me and Benoit and Edge to have a three-way submission match. And I said, ‘well that’s super boring. A three-way submission match, the only way you can win is a submission, blah blah blah. It’d be kinda boring.'”

On his idea: “So I came up with the idea to do a match, like a ladder match. A six-way ladder match. And Brian Gewirtz, who was a good writer at the time said, ‘well what’s at stake?’ So I said, ‘well why don’t you have a contract where the winner gets a title shot the next night?’ Then Brian said, ‘Well, why don’t you make it you can use it any time over the following year and you can cash it in at any time?’ And so we took that to Vince and Vince agreed, loved the idea. His only concession was that the contract had to be in a briefcase. Knowing how Vince is, maybe he wanted the people to see it rather than just a piece of paper hanging there. Like some kind of an actual trophy. And maybe he thought the briefcase was something you could actually carry and use. So it was a really cool kind of a three-way invention of this match because even though Vince’s little thing was just the briefcase, the briefcase has become synonymous with the show.”

If you use any quotes, please credit Talk is Jericho with an h/t to 411mania.com.