WWE has a pretty long track record of start-and-stop pushes, but after winning Money In The Bank, it seems like Theory will avoid this en route to the tippy top of the card. It looked like he'd had the rug pulled out from underneath him earlier in the premium live event when he lost the United States Championship to Bobby Lashley. All that did was clear the way for him to ascend from the mid-card title to a shot at Roman Reigns or Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam.
When the titular Money In The Bank match was set to begin, Theory was revealed as a last-second entrant into the bout. After weeks of qualification matches and stipulations for the other competitors, Vince McMahon's protege was inserted into the proceedings to a chorus of boos. Fans in Las Vegas may have been upset with the final outcome, but from a long-term storytelling perspective, WWE actually got this one right and leveraged his gimmick perfectly.
If the goal was to make Theory one of the most disliked heels in the promotion, shoehorning him into the Money In The Bank main event instead of making him qualify was a wonderful way to do it. Having him win the briefcase was just icing on the cake as WWE fully committed to their push of Theory right before the eyes of fans. Could he still cash in and lose at SummerSlam? Of course, that's a possibility, but it seems unlikely that WWE would take the US Title off of Theory and have him win Money In The Bank, only to have him lose to Reigns or Lesnar following his cash-in. If they wanted to cool him off and start him over elsewhere on the card, Theory would have simply lost to Lashley and then cut a promo on Monday Night Raw about how the match wasn't fair or whatever.
Instead, WWE fully committed to pulling the trigger on Theory, and barring some odd backstage issues, he seems primed for a key role in the company for the foreseeable future. Fans don't have to like him. At this juncture of his career, that is the point. Audiences are having the kind of reactions to him that they're supposed to be having. That all could change in an instant at SummerSlam, though, if WWE approaches things properly.
Theory cashing in (mercifully) gets at least one title off of Roman Reigns, who hasn't been defending the unified titles on television or premium live events much since WrestleMania 38. That accomplishes two things for WWE: it creates a potential main-event level player in Theory while protecting Roman and Brock. They will presumably be pretty beat up following their Last Man Standing main event match against Lesnar. He can then hang onto the Monday Night Raw strap until Cody Rhodes is ready to return. Or Theory could square off against the Face Making Machine himself, Seth Rollins. Regardless of the direction, WWE goes with Theory, they deserve credit for sticking with this push and seeing it through to the end. Or at least until SummerSlam.