10 Things You Didn't Know About Jinder Mahal
Jinder was trained by an Olympic medallist - but not the one you're thinking of.
Jinder Mahal is the WWE champion! Jinder Mahal! Let's say it one more time: Jinder Mahal! These really are wonderful times we're living in.
OK, so admittedly not everybody is agog with excitement about 'The Maharaja's Backlash title victory, but hey, look at this way: it's not Randy bloomin' Orton. This fact alone should be celebrated.
Jinder's sudden, you may say unexpected, rise to the peak of the wrestling mountain means many won't have even had time to familiarise themselves with the new champ. Sure, he was on the WWE roster for years before his 2014 release, but he never did anything during that time to pique anyone's interest. Now, he's the king of the business. And a lot of people are asking: just who is Jinder Mahal, really? (Or at least, part of that sentence.)
Born in Calgary in 1985, Jinder Mahal (real name Yuvraj Singh Dhesi) was a fan of wrestling from the youngest age, with his first memory of the business coming in front of the TV set with his grandfather when he was just three years old. 23 years later Mahal arrived on WWE TV for the first time.
His initial short run in WWE was interesting, to say the least. He started off portraying an Indian aristocrat in a similar vein to Tiger Ali Singh, attempting to bully The Great Khali for... reasons. After this story fizzled out and Mahal found himself doing a whole lot of nothing, he became a part of 3MB, which at the time seemed like the strangest group possible.
Slater, Mahal, and McIntyre took that chicken sh*t and made a damn fine cordon bleu out of it all, but who knew it'd presage a title victory for the Maharaja of Metal? We certainly didn't know that then, and nor did we know these other things either...
10. His First Match Was Against The Hart Dynasty
Well, first match that I know of anyway.
It wasn't truly against the Hart Dynasty either, as DH Smith and Tyson Kidd were nowhere to be seen way back in 2004. Smith and Kidd were working under their real names of Harry Smith and TJ Wilson at the time, and the match took place in December 2007.
Stampede Wrestling was the promotion, the famous Canadian company based in Jinder's home town of Calgary. Our dear Mahal was barely 19 at the time, wrestling under the name Tiger Raj Singh.
Seeing as it was two local boys against two 'foreign' heels, the future WWE Tag Champions came out on top, albeit by DQ. Elsewhere on the show, Nattie Neidhart won a match by count out. Talk about a stacked card.