WWE's Money In The Bank is right around the corner, and speculation on the internet about the upcoming matches is at an all-time high. (Speaking of: check out CinemaBlend's MITB predictions.) There's a big rumor that the WWE is planning for something big at its London Premium Live Event, potentially via an upset, a surprise appearance, or both. Many fans thought evidence of a spoilery nature was discovered when a viral photo making the rounds seemed to reveal a wrestler deliberately being scrubbed from a photo taken on the plane to London, but let's pump the brakes a bit because all is not as it seems.
There's a photo circulating the internet right now that shows wrestlers Ricochet, Otis, Damian Priest, Matt Riddle, Gunther, Ludwig Kaiser, and Giovanni Vinci all smiling and seated at a bar on the plane ride. It seemed like an innocent enough photo, minus the blatant disregard of kayfabe and not keeping up the act that Riddle and Imperium hate each other until a Twitter user noticed an intentionally sloppy Photoshop job potentially obscuring another person in the photo, which can be seen right here.
There are a number of WWE superstars who could return before Summerslam, and three come to mind as possible of making a surprise appearance at Money In The Bank. Randy Orton, whose dad said he's close to returning, would be a great ally to Matt Riddle during his match with Gunther. Drew McIntyre returning to the WWE in Europe would be a massive moment, and everyone wants to see Bray Wyatt again. Could any one of those three men have been who this photo is hiding?
As it turns out, the answer is no. While Twitter was up in arms debating who could be in hiding behind this poor Photoshop job, people on Reddit already knew there wasn't a wrestler being edited out at all. This picture originally was shared on r/SquaredCircle by SnakePitWN, who added the following caption explaining how he doctored the photo to edit his friend out of the picture:
Got a pic from my friend who works at Virgin Atlantic of the boys flying over today for the show in Liverpool before MITB. Obviously used magic eraser to remove them but thought it was worth sharing 😎
In another comment, the poster explained he edited out three airline workers for privacy reasons, which is why there's a gap between Gunther and Giovanni Vinci. Unfortunately, that floating ear doesn't belong to The Viper or any other wrestler, but rather an airline worker. Perhaps one who has excellent wrestling skills themselves, but we'll probably never know.
I'm a bit disappointed the wrestling fandom didn't all collectively catch some secret conspiracy, but also impressed three people can fill a space that a WWE wrestler could realistically take up as well. Now I just want every wrestler in the roster measured by how many average-size people it would take to occupy the same space they take up.
The picture ended up being nothing, but the rumors are still out there that there are big things in store for the upcoming WWE event. That's not hard to believe, given the company doesn't frequent the UK as often as the states, and it's even less frequent that London gets a pay-per-view. Just because a botched Photoshop job didn't end up being a wrestler doesn't mean that there isn't a wrestler on that flight that we don't know about. We won't know for sure until the actual event, which should be exciting even without massive surprises.
Catch Money In The Bank with a Peacock Premium subscription on Saturday, July 1st, at a special start time of 3:00 p.m. ET. I can't wait to learn who will win the big contracts, and eager to see if CinemaBlend was spot on with their picks for the event.
