8 New Directions For WWE Champion AJ Styles
Phenomenal news.
Of all the new paths new WWE Heavyweight Champion AJ Styles may travel, the heel turn detour is narrow at best. WWE's undisputed best in-ring performer just dethroned the most tedious and undeserving top-tier titleholder of the modern era - perhaps ever. Nobody is going to jeer him. People are more likely to offer him their daughters, if it hinders main event Jinder once and for all.
The motivation behind the most uplifting title switch in recent memory - you'd probably have to travel back in time to 2014 to remember this overwhelming high of thank-f*ck-for-that euphoria - is unclear.
Did Vince McMahon suffer a Tokyo Dome-sized panic attack at the prospect of Kenny Omega Vs. Chris Jericho at NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 12, and settle on the switch as a drastic, apologetic measure? Did the faint threat of genuine competition move him from his throne of self-indulgence? Or, more cynically, is McMahon so behind the Mahal Machine that he feels a loss to Brock Lesnar at Survivor Series is a self-inflicted booby trap blockading his rupee treasure hunt? Little is known at present, other than the King, for now, is dead.
Long live the real king - the potential saviour of SmackDown (please)...
8. Rookarike Retcon
Much like December's tour of India, the grim inevitability of Mahal's mandated rematch clause threatens to douse this uplifting moment.
As aforementioned, the logic behind the switch is incredibly difficult to parse - part and parcel of being a WWE fan, really, but this is especially perplexing. WWE delivered this switch with the poor timing of a Mongol Japanese invasion, on the surface; Jinder is now sleepwalking his way to India just as WWE hopes to breathe new life into the emerging market. A demotion to the blue brand's Survivor Series team is hardly the momentum Jinder needs to drive ticket sales which, at time of writing, aren't hot: over half of the arena seating plan remains unallocated. Sole Survivor Jinder is nowhere near as marketable as Jinder Mahal, WWE Heavyweight Champion.
Which is all a roundabout way of accepting the fact that this may simply represent a fork in Jinder's rumoured Road to WrestleMania. It would be a massively antagonistic move on McMahon's part, but then, so was anointing Mahal as Champion in the first instance.