WWE Hot Take: Damian Priest over LA Knight at MITB Already Looks Like Wrong Choice

In what seemed like an almost stubborn refusal to go away from a long-term plan, WWE might have botched both Damian Priest and LA Knight's outlook with the men's Money in the Bank ladder match finish.

There, it was Priest who won the briefcase and the right to challenge champions at any point, any time. The idea being, almost assuredly, that fans will eat up how he then proceeds to interact with the rest of Judgement Day and especially Finn Balor, who continues to feud with current top Raw champion Seth Rollins.

The problem is, one week out from the head-scratching decision to go away from the lightning-in-a-bottle known as LA Knight, both Superstars now seem stuck in neutral with no good way out.

Look at Priest. His predictable flirtation with a cash-in while Balor and Rollins did battle later that night at the Money in the Bank PLE had meh written all over it. There was never a point where it really felt like he might cash-in, a scenario that required fans to put their heads in the proverbial sand about the fact Priest came off looking rather foolish considering Balor had spent all match brutalizing Rollins' injured ribs, leaving him vulnerable.

The very next Raw, Priest missed a chance to cash-in on Rollins while his stable had numbers because of a brief run-in from Balor, allowing the champion to escape. The idea is to build tension within Judgment Day, but is anyone really pining to see Priest vs. Balor? Is anyone really wanting to see the best non-Bloodline stable in WWE beefing with each other and breaking up because Priest happened to win the briefcase?

To make matters worse, anything Priest does accomplish—assuming he doesn't fail a cash-in and just spiral off into a Judgment Day-centric feud—will have the bad decision hanging over his head.

It almost feels like, outside of rewarding Priest for merely being a member of a popular stable, WWE is overreacting to his one-off match with Bad Bunny in front of a very friendly Puerto Rico crowd at Backlash back in May. It's that, or they're semi-panicking about not having a big monster-type guy with Baron Corbin on NXT and Braun Strowman out. In fact, this whole ordeal almost feels like a Corbin push of old.

Now look at Knight. There's something to be said for just how over he is and yes, he's one of the few to emerge better than he entered a feud with Bray Wyatt. But he's got little going for him now too. He, too, will have the stigma of what could have been hanging over his head. He'll cool off dramatically if he's stuck in a non-title feud and maybe even a mid-card title feud.

With Logan Paul now looking like he'll be involved with Ricochet for a feud that goes into SummerSlam, that would appear to leave Knight a bit directionless, too. That's not exactly encouraging going into the second-biggest PLE of the year. There's time to rectify this, of course, but the early trend hasn't looked great.

And that's the biggest problem. The briefcase has had a major credibility problem over the last few years, getting hot-potatoed around and something of an afterthought. Priest could continue that. He doesn't feel like a believable threat to Rollins, barring a massive betrayal (which won't do his character any good) and he's 100 percent not a threat to unified champion Roman Reigns.

Knight would be a threat to both. Yes, even Reigns—if Sami Zayn could become believable as an outsider in a family-based storyline, the guy reminding fans of The Rock and Steven Austin in promos could, too. The fact he's so over would make him a credible threat to end a 1,000-plus-day reign at any PLE.

And maybe we still get Knight doing just that over the course of the next year. But it's hard to shake the feeling WWE just missed in a big way. The irony of fans wanting WWE to stick to longer-term stories and then disliking this current track that is a result of doing just that shouldn't be lost, either—but when a Superstar gets as organically over as Knight, it should change plans. It did with Zayn, so why not now?

As always, WWE and the Superstars themselves can prove all of this wrong in time. Here's to hoping all involved do, because Priest is fantastic but put in a bad spot now and Knight has unrivaled, Attitude Era potential capable of headlining the promotion. But once again, the messy stipulation that is the briefcase has made things much more difficult than necessary.