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When a WWE pay-per-view (PPV) event is on the horizon, the staff of Cageside Seats usually offers predictions for all of the advertised matches on the card. This data can be used to calculate a simple predictability rating for any event.
Six different staff members predicted the winners for the matches that took place on May 10 at Money in the Bank 2020. Staff members received credit for a correct prediction of the winner of any match, even if they were wrong about the context of that victory.
The Cageside Seats match preview articles for Money in the Bank also offered polls allowing Cagesiders the chance to weigh in with their predictions.
The following chart contains the prediction results for these matches. The leftmost column includes the match list. Below each staff member’s name, the number “1” is a correct prediction and the number “0” is an incorrect prediction. Empty boxes indicate where no prediction data was available. The rightmost column contains the overall predictability rating for every match, and the very last row shows the overall accuracy of each individual staff member.
Two matches (Hardy vs. Cesaro, Truth vs. Lashley) were omitted because they were announced too late.
The line for Bayley’s match can be interpreted as follows: “6 out of 7 predictions for Bayley’s match were correct, which is a predictability rating of 85.7%.”
Staff Predictions for Money in the Bank 2020
| Match | Geno | Sean | Cain | Claire | Kyle | Stella | Polls | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Match | Geno | Sean | Cain | Claire | Kyle | Stella | Polls | Total |
| SD Tag Title 4-Way | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 85.7 |
| Bayley vs. Tamina | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 85.7 |
| Strowman vs. Wyatt | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 57.1 |
| McIntyre vs. Rollins | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
| Women's MITB Ladder | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 28.6 |
| Men's MITB Ladder | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Total | 50.0 | 50.0 | 66.7 | 83.3 | 50.0 | 66.7 | 50.0 | 59.5 |
These numbers add up to 25 correct predictions and 17 incorrect predictions, which means the overall predictability rating for Money in the Bank 2020 is 59.5%.
This decreases the overall predictability rating for 2020 WWE PPVs from 64.9% down to 63.9% (156 correct vs. 88 incorrect predictions). For comparison's sake, the overall predictability ratings each year from from 2015 through 2019 were 63.4%, 61.1%, 61.6%, 58.7%, and 63.7%, respectively.
Now here are the voting percentages from the Cageside community polls for the winners of these matches:
- 40%: New Day (24% Miz/JoMo, 23% Forgotten Sons, 14% Lucha HP)
- 75%: Bayley
- 49%: Braun Strowman
- 85%: Drew McIntyre
- 23%: Asuka (41% Baszler, 22% Jax, 7% Evans, 4% Brooke, 3% Carmella)
- 9%: Otis (51% Styles, 27% Black, 8% Corbin, 3% Bryan, 1% Mysterio)
Drew McIntyre and Braun Strowman won the WWE championship and Universal championship, respectively, last month at WrestleMania 36. The poll results show that the idea of Drew dropping his title this soon was a tough sell for WWE, whereas Strowman’s match with Wyatt was essentially a toss-up.
The poll for the men’s ladder match gave a combined 78% of the vote to either AJ Styles or Aleister Black, so it was pretty shocking that Otis emerged as the winner. None of the Cageside staff members saw that coming.
Asuka’s victory in the women’s ladder match was not as surprising, though Baszler was the favorite based on the poll results. The polling percentages for the three SmackDown women combined for 14%, which is more evidence that WWE presented them as pretenders in this one.
To be fair, the three SmackDown men combined for 21% of the vote in their ladder match, so there wasn’t exactly an obvious choice on that side either, and one of them ended up winning it.
The staff of Cageside Seats had a decent night with predicting the winners at Money in the Bank 2020. How did you fare, Cagesiders?