The 2019 Money in the Bank was the 10th annual Money in the Bank professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event produced by WWE. It was held for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw, SmackDown, and 205 Live brand divisions. The event took place on May 19, 2019, at the XL Center in Hartford, Connecticut.
Twelve matches were contested at the event, including one on the Kickoff pre-show. In the main event, unannounced entrant Brock Lesnar won the men's Money in the Bank ladder match. Bayley won the women's ladder match in the opening match, and later cashed in the contract to win the SmackDown Women's Championship from Charlotte Flair, who herself had just won the title from Becky Lynch. In her other title defense, Lynch retained the Raw Women's Championship against Lacey Evans. In other prominent matches, Kofi Kingston defeated Kevin Owens to retain SmackDown's WWE Championship, while Seth Rollins defeated AJ Styles to retain Raw's Universal Championship.
Production
Background
Money in the Bank is an annual professional wrestling event produced by WWE since 2010, generally held between June and July. The concept of the show comes from WWE's established Money in the Bank ladder match, in which multiple wrestlers use ladders to retrieve a briefcase hanging above the ring. While the briefcases at the 2018 event contained contracts that guaranteed the winners a match for a world championship of their respective brand at any time within the next year, the 2019 contracts allowed the winners the choice of either brands' world championships. Since the 2017 event, each year's show has featured a men's and a women's ladder match, and beginning with 2018, each features eight wrestlers, evenly divided between the Raw and SmackDown brand divisions. Male wrestlers competed for a contract to grant them a match for either Raw's Universal Championship or SmackDown's WWE Championship, while female wrestlers competed for a Raw Women's Championship or SmackDown Women's Championship match contract. Announced on March 4, 2019, the 2019 event was the 10th Money in the Bank and featured wrestlers from the Raw, SmackDown, and 205 Live brands—the only to feature the 205 Live brand. The 2019 event also moved Money in the Bank to the May slot of WWE's pay-per-view (PPV) calendar, taking place on May 19, 2019, at the XL Center in Hartford, Connecticut. The event aired on pay-per-view worldwide and was available to livestream on the WWE Network. Tickets went on sale on March 8.
Storylines
The event comprised 12 matches, including one on the Kickoff pre-show, that resulted from scripted storylines, where wrestlers portrayed heroes, villains, or less distinguishable characters in scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches. Results were predetermined by WWE's writers on the Raw, SmackDown, and 205 Live brands, while storylines were produced on WWE's weekly television shows, Monday Night Raw, SmackDown Live, and the cruiserweight-exclusive 205 Live.
At WrestleMania 35, Becky Lynch defeated Ronda Rousey and Charlotte Flair in a winner takes all triple threat match to win both the Raw and SmackDown Women's Championships. She was then double-booked to defend both championships at Money in the Bank. For the Raw Women's Championship, NXT call-up Lacey Evans attacked the double champion on both Raw and SmackDown following WrestleMania. Evans was subsequently drafted to Raw during the Superstar Shake-up and defeated Natalya to earn a Raw Women's Championship match. For the SmackDown Women's Championship, former champion Charlotte Flair took offense that she lost her title despite not being the one who was pinned at WrestleMania. Lynch exclaimed that she would not freely give Flair a rematch and demanded new challengers. Among the named challengers was new SmackDown draftee Bayley. Flair then defeated Bayley to earn a SmackDown Women's Championship match.
On the April 22 episode of Raw, Chief Operating Officer Triple H scheduled two triple threat matches with the winners facing each other to determine Seth Rollins' next challenger for the Universal Championship. New Raw draftee AJ Styles defeated fellow draftees Rey Mysterio and Samoa Joe in the first triple threat match, while Baron Corbin defeated Drew McIntyre and new draftee The Miz in the second. Styles then defeated Corbin to earn a Universal Championship match against Rollins at Money in the Bank.