To most WWE fans, Sunday night’s Money in the Bank pay-per-view ended on one of the most shocking moments of the year. After roughly 30 minutes of battling through WWE Headquarters, the Money in the Bank Ladder Match had come down to AJ Styles and King Corbin both unhooking the briefcase simultaneously. Before either man could emphatically take possession, Elias appeared out of nowhere and whacked Corbin from behind with a guitar, causing the big man to fall while Styles fumbled the case. It wound up falling off the opposite side, right into the waiting arms of Otis.
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The big man sat down with ComicBook.com on Monday to talk about the match, and what he plans on doing with the briefcase. Simply put, he doesn’t plan on waiting around to cash it in.
“I’m not going to wait, be able to cash that thing right away,” Otis said. “There’s no time to waste, oh, yeah.”
The match itself was the latest installment of WWE’s cinematic matches, following in the footsteps of the Boneyard Match (The Undertaker vs. Styles) and Firefly Fun House Match (Bray Wyatt vs. John Cena) from WrestleMania 36. Otis said the filming (which took place several weeks ago) started at approximately 4 p.m. and lasted past midnight.
“It was definitely a long day,” explained. “But with those guys, I mean, geez, every time you’re at work with WWE, it’s like a day off. Because you just enjoy what you do and just the fun we had with it. It’s a great day, just the freedom of just going ‘Yeah, I’ll drop the weights on AJ, just drop this load on his chest.’ That’s just so damn funny to me.”
Otis has a bit of experience working on film sets (he starred in the WWE Studios film The Main Event that premiered on Netflix last month), but unlike with movies he and the other 11 men and women in the match were allowed to ad-lib a good portion of the match. For example, Otis came up with the idea to trap Styles underneath the heavy barbell inside the building’s gym.
“It was like, ‘all right, let’s shoot down this area here’ and you talk to your producers or writers. That was the fun part, too, because I know AJ is just like… he goes, ‘You’re not doing that to me.’ I go, “Oh, yeah, AJ, this’ll be great!’ It was basically like what could we do, all the toys we could play with,” he said. “It wasn’t like a direct ‘you guys do it this part of the room.’ I think the directors [were there] to make sure to get your point across as to why we’re doing this in this particular scene, but it was basically just like “Oh, yeah, we should do this with this, and then all right, if I break it, I’m sorry,’ kind of thing.”
He said once everyone got to the roof it was about 34 degrees with the wind blowing.
“Definitely felt it. Definitely a little bit chilly being in the ring there,” he said.
With the Money in the Bank briefcase in his possession, Otis can challenge either WWE Universal Champion Braun Strowman or WWE Champion Drew McIntyre for their respective championships at any time over the next year.
