5 reasons why Jinder Mahal’s main event push is over
Well, it has been a strange year in the world of pro wrestling.
You could look at 2017 as a strange year all around in the world, but, in the WWE universe, it has simply been outright bizarre. Nowhere has this been more transparent than in the booking of its top titles booking. The Universal Championship on Raw has been missing in action for almost the entire year. But the WWE Championship, on the other hand, was held by Jinder Mahal for the majority of 2017. If you called that fact before the year, you are lying.
You cannot deny that WWE has invested a lot of time and money in experimenting with the idea of Jinder Mahal as a possible top star. He held the WWE Championship for six months, he headlined multiple pay-per-views and was pushed as a major star to finally get the WWE into the major potential market of India. But has it worked? I would say by multiple measures it has been a huge failure. His time as a major factor in the main event scene has come and gone.
As we look back at Jinder’s unique 2017, I present my five reasons why Jinder’s Main Event Push Is Over:
#5 Too Many Other Compelling Options in 2018
I can say this about Jinder that he was the top heel of the Smackdown Brand in 2017. He feuded with the likes of Randy Orton, Shinsuke Nakamura and AJ Styles. While I doubt a lot of wrestling fans will place those feuds among the best in 2017, it did provide a lot of significant television time in 2017 for the blue brand. And that is a major problem for Jinder going forward.
Jinder cannot really make a good case to revisit those main event style feuds. It didn’t exactly set the world on fire last time in terms of match quality or television ratings. As WWE Champion AJ Styles looks for his next opponent, I think most of us would consider Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens and even Shinsuke Nakamura to be more compelling options going into 2018.