It was May 21 in Rosemont, Illinois, when the WWE shook the world. It was on this evening at a pay-per-view called Backlash that former jobber expert Jinder Mahal defeated Randy Orton and won the WWE Championship. On a night where the anything was possible, the impossible happened.
We are now two months into the Mahal title reign on Smackdown Live, and while the move created buzz, we are beginning to see the failure that is Jinder Mahal as WWE Champion. Case in point: last week’s Battleground pay-per-view. In a match that everyone would assume would stink (the Punjabi Prison Match), it lived up to all of its crappy fanfare as probably the worst match of the year. The bout reached epic crap status with the appearance The Great Khali, who helped Mahal retain the title in a match that would have put a crystal meth addict to sleep.
In the two months since Mahal’s title win, Smackdown Live ratings have suffered as well. While Smackdown Live has always been the red-headed stepchild television show for the WWE, it seems that fans have reacted negatively with Mahal as champion. Smackdown Live ratings have averaged 2.3 million viewers since Mahal’s WWE Championship reigns started, with just 2 million people watching the June 13 event. Is it all Jinder Mahal’s fault that Smackdown Live’s ratings had plummeted? Maybe not, but he is a major reason.
WWE fans wants to see a compelling champion, whether a heel or a babyface. They want a baby face whom they can love or a heel they can hate with a passion. With Mahal, he is not connecting with fans because they do not take him seriously. Yes, he wins his matches the heelish way by cheating, but three months ago he was getting destroyed by Rob Gronkowski. Six months ago, he was jobbing to everyone on the WWE roster. Then in five weeks, he goes from job guy, to number one contender, to WWE Champion? The fans do not buy it.
I am not saying that Randy Orton was the answer either as Smackdown Live ratings stagnated with him as champions as well. It seems as if Bray Wyatt could have been the answer as ratings during his annoyingly short title reign were higher than both Orton and Mahal’s. The question now becomes where does the WWE go from here?
The reported plan for Summerslam is for John Cena to face Mahal for the title and for Cena to win his record 17th WWE Title, which no one I know is looking forward to seeing. However, it does get the title off of Mahal and get people interested again. The Cena lovers will get their conquered hero back with a title and the Cena haters will watch to see who gets buried under the strong arm of John Cena shovel. It will not be Mahal, who will fade into mid-card oblivion, never to come close to a title reign again.
The WWE will never admit it, but the Jinder Mahal experiment is and will be considered an epic failure when it is all said and done. It is one thing to try to spike interest and get fans talking about your product. It is another thing to insult fans intelligence by presenting them with an inferior champion who has no business at the top of your company. It is no wonder that the United States Championship has eclipsed the WWE Title on Tuesday nights.
Jinder: say hi to JBL, David Arquette, Vince Russo, and Judy Bagwell as you join the pantheon of the worst wrestling champions of all-time. I am pretty sure Dante talked about a place like that in The Inferno.
