Every Original WWE NXT Black & Gold Roster Member - Where Are They Now?

17. Jinder Mahal

What was he doing at the time?

Not remotely foreshadowing what would eventually happen to him five years later. A perfectly adequate wrestler in 2012, Jinder Mahal had been through the main roster meat grinder with limited success, and hadn't even found the passable 3MB undercard comedy role that most assumed would be the headline moment from any of his WWE tenures. Here, he was still trapped in a cartoonishly privileged heel persona that had an even lower ceiling that his post-WWE Championship run jobber-to-the-stars era. He defeated Jason Jordan, Derrick Bateman and Percy Watson on the early tapings, giving him one of the best early records of anybody on this list. All of that was in service to a tournament final loss to inaugural NXT Champion Seth Rollins. 

What is he doing now?

Still wrestling, and fairly regularly. The aforementioned earthquake his shock 2017 WWE Title win caused was only really seismic in the worst ways. It revealed just how far the company had fallen, rather than serving as a discovery of an incredible talent or a bold new booking frontier. He plodded on in the shadow of it for years, before a 2024 release and return to the independent scene as Raj Dhesi.