Carmella waited almost as long as she could to cash in her Money in the Bank win from last year, finally using it at WrestleMania a few months ago. She wasn’t too excited about having to defend the championship at this year’s Money in the Bank but a fight against Asuka it was, with Paige not taking no for an answer from Carmella when she announced it.
Carmella retains SmackDown Women’s title thanks to returning James Ellsworth
The defending champ defeated Asuka thanks to some outside distractions.
Asuka’s intro remains the best, and Carmella’s intro remains Carmella’s intro. She seemed pretty confident in her ability to defend her title at the start, and with that she and Asuka started their opening attempts to get under each other’s skin.
Carmella started her trash talk early, complete with a moonwalk. She also started shenanigans early, open-hand slapping Asuka across the face and shouting “I’m not scared of you Asuka!” Asuka retaliated with multiple hip attacks and finished the sequence off with a hip attack off the ropes, launching Carmella out of the ring.
That led to the champ going to grab her belt and saying “I do what I want!” and strutting around with it before getting kicked in the face by Asuka, still standing inside the ring.
With both of them back inside the ring, Carmella got Asuka in a double chicken wing and took the upper hand. They traded attacks for a while, with Carmella taking down Asuka again and again inside the ring. Asuka fought back with a solid combination off the rope and on the canvas.
Carmella thought she could regain her energy and keep Asuka under control while she did it — employing some more slaps to do it. But Asuka combatted her insulting slaps with a flying knee to the cheek bone and then a flying kick off the ropes.
Asuka tried another flying kick off the ropes, but Carmella was smart and ducked so her opponent flew outside of the ring instead. Carmella kept her out of the ring by kicking the hand holding on to the rope, and then flying out of the ring herself to tackle Asuka again.
After throwing her back in the ring, Carmella had multiple pin chances but Asuka kicked out every time.
That led to quite the meltdown from the champ, screaming and slapping the floor in frustration. Asuka led a decent comeback until a mysterious masked figure appeared at the side of the ring, distracting her and allowing Carmella to try again. That try failed but the figure removed his mask to reveal James Ellsworth, with Asuka distracted for long enough this time for Carmella to finally pin her and retain her championship.
He was probably so distracting because of the super weird wink, to be honest.
With that, Carmella got help from Ellsworth to win an important match for the second Money in the Bank in a row, and keeps the belt for now.
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