Jacy Jayne’s legs were shaking.
Not metaphorically. Not in the traditional wrestling sense where someone has just been through fifteen minutes of physical punishment and is required to look appropriately knackered. They were actually stammering underneath her as she lay across Alexa Bliss and watched Daphanie LaShaunn’s hand hit the mat.
One.
Two.
Three.
Then Jayne rolled outside.
She staggered around, fell over, smiled like someone who had just discovered that the terrible idea had worked, stuck her tongue out and eventually found the referee waiting with her Women’s United States Championship.
Jayne held up three fingers.
Three?
Yes, Jacy. Three.
She had qualified for Money in the Bank.
It was probably the best thirty seconds of the entire match.
Jacy Jayne Was Having Far Too Much Fun
Before any wrestling happened, you couldn’t help but notice that Jacy Jayne, Jade Cargill, and Alexa Bliss all looked fantastic.
Cargill in particular appears to have been assembled in a laboratory specialising exclusively in shoulders and abdominal muscles. Her abs look as though somebody poured concrete into a mould and then decided to teach the resulting structure professional wrestling.
More on that later.
Jayne immediately began behaving like Jacy Jayne.
After dropping Bliss, she climbed onto the announce table to pose and flaunt. There was no particular tactical advantage to doing this. Wrestling contains many strange little rituals that everyone accepts without question, and voluntarily standing on furniture during a fight because you want several thousand people to look at you is among them.
Bliss took her feet out.
Fair enough.
But it established something that would become increasingly obvious as the match progressed.
Jayne is always doing something.
There is rarely dead air with her. She talks. She poses. She sells. She reacts. She looks horrified when something goes wrong and unbearably pleased with herself when something goes right.
She understands that wrestling is partly fighting and partly making sure people are looking at you while you do it.
Jacy Jayne vs Jade Cargill Was Better Than Expected
When Jayne and Cargill were left alone together, I sighed.
You probably know the spot.
Cargill gets a little one-on-one showcase, throws the smaller wrestler around, looks terrifying, Alexa returns, and the Triple Threat continues.
Instead, Jayne actually got to wrestle her.
Good.
Her hurricanrana was excellent, and the pair produced a surprisingly competitive exchange. Later, they used a sidewalk slam reversal to demonstrate Cargill’s enormous strength without requiring Jayne to spend the sequence impersonating airport luggage.
That is how this should work.
Cargill is much bigger and stronger than Jayne. Nobody needs convincing of this. The interesting part is watching Jayne figure out what she can do about it.
For a while, the match understood that.
Bliss returned, Cargill went outside, and the combinations rotated again. It was developing into a perfectly enjoyable Triple Threat, helped considerably by Bliss being exactly the sort of wrestler these matches need.
Then came the superplex.
And unfortunately, Jade Cargill also came with it.
The Superplex Spot
After the advert, Jayne was preparing to superplex Bliss.
Cargill was supposed to enter underneath Jayne and powerbomb her while Jayne simultaneously superplexed Bliss.
You have seen this before.
It is one of professional wrestling’s great pieces of collective nonsense. Three people cooperate to perform an elaborate human demolition machine while pretending none of them could simply move somewhere else.
When performed properly, it looks spectacular.
This did not.
Cargill entered the ring and took so long getting into position that you could almost see the machinery underneath the trick. She approached Jayne, seemed uncertain, appeared to abandon the attempt, then eventually latched onto Jayne’s legs when Jayne had already begun the superplex motion.
Rather than making Cargill look responsible for this enormous feat of strength, it looked as though she had arrived late to help someone move a sofa.
The move still happened.
That wasn’t really the problem.
The problem was that wrestling depends on hiding the joins.
The audience knows what this is. We know Jayne and Bliss are cooperating. We know people stand around waiting for moves. We know Irish whips make considerably less sense when you look at them for more than four seconds.
The wrestlers’ job is to make us forget.
For those few seconds, Cargill did the opposite.
She showed us everything.
The Jade Cargill Problem Is Becoming Difficult to Ignore
This is where frustration takes over.
Cargill does some things extremely well.
Her presentation remains tremendous. Her physique is extraordinary. When everything is positioned correctly, and the sequence plays directly into her strengths, she can produce wrestling images very few people can.
Later, she hit Jaded on Bliss.
It looked fantastic.
There we go.
The difficulty is everything required between those moments.
There has long been a strange conversation around Cargill where her relative inexperience is treated as something permanently temporary. At some stage, however, potential has to become performance.
This match was another uncomfortable example.
She spent substantial periods outside the ring, which is perfectly normal Triple Threat construction. Still, when the match required her to negotiate more complicated sequences, the difference between her and Bliss or Jayne became conspicuous.
It is a little like watching Mechagodzilla being asked to assemble flat-pack furniture.
The machinery is extraordinary. The destructive potential is obvious. You absolutely believe it could throw your wardrobe through a wall.
Then somebody hands it an Allen key.
This matters because Cargill is no longer being presented as a developmental prospect learning quietly away from the spotlight. She has been featured in major championship programmes and major television time. Eventually, the standards attached to that position have to follow.
There were accusations for years that John Cena “couldn’t wrestle” because people had reduced his offence to a handful of recognisable moves.
Whatever anyone thought of that argument, Cena could structure a major wrestling match.
With Cargill, I am increasingly unsure what the second reliably excellent thing is once we get beyond Jaded.
That sounds harsh.
It also keeps becoming harder to avoid.
Alexa Bliss Quietly Held Everything Together
The shame of focusing too heavily on Cargill’s problems is that Alexa Bliss had a very good match.
Bliss did more than her share.
She moved smoothly between Jayne and Cargill, bumped when needed, kept the sequences flowing, and provided the match with the experienced connective tissue Triple Threats desperately need.
Most interestingly, she had genuine chemistry with Jayne.
Once Cargill disappeared following another missed attack, Bliss and Jayne were briefly left alone.
Immediately, I wanted that match.
Bliss eventually landed Sister Abigail on Jayne and appeared to have secured the win, only for Cargill to drag the referee from the ring before the count could be completed.
It was actually clever.
Credit where it is due.
Triple Threats have no disqualifications, so rather than breaking up the pin conventionally, Cargill simply removed the person responsible for counting it.
A wrestling solution to a wrestling problem.
Bliss responded by losing her mind and launching herself at Cargill with a Thesz press.
The match suddenly had urgency again.
Then everything clicked into place.
Jacy Jayne Steals It
Cargill hit Jaded on Bliss.
Again, it looked excellent.
She covered.
Jayne appeared.
Kick.
Flush in Cargill’s face.
Jayne collapsed onto Bliss.
One.
Two.
Three.
Perfect.
Not because Jayne dominated the match. Not because she proved herself stronger than Jade Cargill or more experienced than Alexa Bliss.
She just understood where she needed to be.
Money in the Bank is built around opportunism anyway. Its entire premise is that somebody climbs a ladder, retrieves a contract and is subsequently encouraged to wait until a champion is half-dead before demanding an immediate title match.
Sporting honour left the building years ago.
Jayne stealing somebody else’s pin therefore felt entirely appropriate.
But the pin itself wasn’t even the best bit.
Everything afterwards was.
Nobody Celebrates Being Awful Quite Like Jacy Jayne
Jayne’s legs trembled throughout the count.
Once it was over, she rolled outside with this wonderful mixture of exhaustion, disbelief and absolute heelish delight.
She staggered.
She fell.
She got back up.
Her eyes were enormous.
She was beaming.
Then LaShaunn handed her the United States Championship, and Jayne still seemed to require administrative confirmation that what had just happened actually counted.
Three?
Yes.
Three.
Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid arrived and looked almost as delighted as she did. Jayne stuck her tongue out while Fatal Influence celebrated together.
Freeze the picture there.
That is professional wrestling.
Not the move. Not the result. Not even the championship.
The reaction.
Jayne had spent the match doing all the unglamorous little things that make somebody else look good. She sold Cargill’s power. She worked smoothly with Bliss. She took bumps. She gave both opponents offence.
Then, when she finally won, she made the victory feel enormous.
That instinct is difficult to teach.
Three Wrestlers, Three Very Different Nights
Bliss leaves this with plenty of credit despite taking the pin.
Someone had to.
She worked extremely well with Jayne, helped organise the chaos and looked convincing throughout. There is absolutely a future singles match between Bliss and Jayne if WWE ever decides to pursue it.
Hopefully they do.
Cargill remains the concern.
There were good moments, particularly Jaded, and dragging the referee from the ring was smart match construction.
But once again there were moments where her inexperience was impossible to disguise.
Perhaps that improves.
At this point, though, assuming it will eventually improve feels increasingly generous.
And then there is Jayne.
She did virtually everything right.
Again.
She worked with a veteran and a much less experienced opponent, adapted herself to both, sold convincingly, produced strong offence when given the opportunity and understood that winning the match was only half the job.
The other half was making us remember that she had won it.
She managed that before she had even properly got back onto her feet.
Jacy Jayne is going to Money in the Bank.
She didn’t overpower Jade Cargill.
She didn’t outlast Alexa Bliss.
She waited until somebody else had done the hard work, kicked them in the face, and stole the pin.
Jacy Jayne has worked out exactly where to stand when it arrives.
Three hands strike the mat.
Jayne falls laughing still.
Someone did the work.
