Many people may be wondering how someone like Jinder Mahal, who was little more than a ‘jobber’ during his initial stint in the WWE, was catapulted up the ranks when he returned to the fold in 2016.
But the truth is that he wasn’t.
Even after Mahal spent two years in the Indies since being released by the WWE in 2014, he didn’t set the world on fire outside the company. And when he signed on again in 2016, he wasn’t set up with a rocket strapped to his back and flown straight to the moon either.
For large parts of 2016, Mahal continued being used as a glorified enhancement talent, losing to the likes of Neville, Sami Zayn and even Darren Young. It was only after WrestleMania 33 that Mahal found himself in the right place at the right time.
SmackDown Live! needed a top heel and the Maharaja, rippling muscles and all, was right there.
But now that he’s been made the WWE Champion, it’s a whole different ball game, as Conor McGregor likes to say. Mahal has the target on his back now, and there will be Superstars lining up to get a shot at his title.
But which opponents actually make sense for Jinder? If the WWE hope to book him as anything other than a flash in the pan Champion, he needs legitimate competition. And by that, I mean one of the five men that are on this list.
Here then are 5 possible challengers for Jinder Mahal’s WWE Championship.
#1 Brock Lesnar
Before you allow your eyebrows to meet your hairline, take a minute to fight off the feeling of incredulity and consider this idea.
Brock Lesnar may be the Universal Champion on Raw, only make sporadic appearances on WWE programming and has five men fighting tooth and nail for the right to face him for his title – but in this day and age, nothing sells more than a Superfight.
Even in the UFC, which the WWE defers to as ‘legitimate competition’, jumping around in weight classes and making belt-unification Superfights has become the name of the game.
Whether in MMA or in pro wrestling, it’s just that much more marketable when Champion fights Champion.
However, the only caveat in making this match is that the next dual-Brand pay-per-view is SummerSlam in August, meaning that both Lesnar and Mahal have to be involved in lengthy reigns in order to even remotely make it a possibility.
But hey, never say never, right?
#2 Randy Orton
Having Randy Orton face off against Jinder would, of course, be the most likely course of action for the WWE to go with considering that the story arc between the two is still incomplete – at least according to conventional pro wrestling standards.
Heel screws babyface out of title... the babyface should ideally get back his own. And so, Randy Orton rematching Jinder Mahal for the WWE title wouldn’t be surprising at all coming from the WWE.
After all, Vince McMahon very much sees Orton as the top babyface on SD Live and there is also the small matter of American-hero-always-wins-against-foreign-devil dynamic to uphold.
Quite a cut and dry booking decision this, to be perfectly honest.
#3 AJ Styles
AJ Styles’ run on SmackDown Live has been a tad puzzling of late. After losing the WWE title to John Cena at Royal Rumble, instead of bouncing straight back into the main event picture, the Phenomenal One has been shunted around into middling feuds.
A man of AJ Styles’calibre, who can actually wrestle a match against a broomstick, shouldn’t have to suffer such lackadaisical bookings. He’s got the crowd’s backing and the ability to work magic with whomsoever he’s paired up – so much so that the WWE Universe would hardly even mind that he is inserted into the WWE title picture after losing to Kevin Owens in a US Title match.
Would his proposed long-term storyline against Kevin Owens get cut short? Yes, it would. But when you pluck Jinder Mahal from the obscurity of jobbing to mid card talent and put the WWE Title on him, anything can fly, right?
Besides, there is always Sami Zayn waiting in the wings, only too ready, willing and able to step in against his arch-nemesis Kevin Owens.
#4 Baron Corbin
Almost every single time I tune into a Baron Corbin match on SmackDown Live! or any other Blue brand specific pay-per-view, I hear JBL’s unmistakable drawl refer to him as a future WWE Champion.
Enough, WWE. We get it.
Baron Corbin has the “look” that has earned so many wrestlers before him (Jinder included) brownie points with Vinne Mac. Now, it’s only the question of when he’s going to smash through that glass ceiling and actually have a run at the top.
But the problem with Corbin has never been the way he looks. Instead, it’s always had to do with the fact that he’s never really gotten over with the crowd the way that he needed to for WWE to actually launch him.
But pitting him against Mahal, however, he just might.
For one, it would be an interesting program featuring two Superstars who haven’t worked the main event scene before and secondly, he would have the whole nationalistic sentiment shtick going for him.
It just might be a gamble worth taking as far as the WWE is concerned.
#5 Shinsuke Nakamura
A lot of people weren’t entirely satisfied with how Shinsuke Nakamura was booked at BackLash, barely limping past the challenge of Dolph Ziggler despite coming in with all this mystique and ‘vibe’ surrounding him.
While their criticism sounds fair, one also has to take into account that much of the mainstream fanbase would have had no idea about who Shinsuke Nakamura was. He neither wrestled extensively in the United States Indie scenes like Kevin Owens and Daniel Bryan nor was he a fixture on free television like AJ Styles was before he signed on with WWE.
As such, his performance against Ziggler – while no means dominant – displayed heart, grit and the gumption to overcome obstacles; all of which are qualities that would have endeared him to the general fan.
Yes, he would have looked better had his entrance been longer than the actual match, but there really isn’t much use crying over spilt milk now. Now, the million dollar question is ‘What next for Shinsuke Nakamura?’.
Surely, the WWE has plumped for him to be main event material right from the onset... at least from what we hear, he’s on main event level money with the company. So why not book him into it good and early?
He’s got bucketloads of charisma, in-ring aptitude and the ability to draw in international audience far more convincingly than Jinder Mahal.
And since the WWE isn’t afraid to experiment by putting the WWE title on one international Superstar, pairing him up in a program with another – especially if that is Shinsuke Nakamura – is a no-brainer.
