The Original Pitch For Jinder Mahal's WWE Main-Roster Return
WWE loves a pun.
Aside from nonsensical booking, making "history" in massive air quotes and doing Roman vs. Lesnar every SIX weeks, is there anything WWE loves more than a pun?
No. The answer is no.
Jinder Mahal isn't a name that naturally lends itself to the sort of wordplay WWE usually favours. For example, they have 'Reigns' who's dominant, 'Bliss' who's perfect, 'Braun' who's strong, 'Cien Almas' who's very good (100), 'Black' who's a goth, and 'Amore' who's good with the ladies. That last one admittedly backfired on them somewhat.
However, if you thought that WWE couldn’t manufacture a horrendous pun out of a name so deliberately designed to sound foreign that it feels largely incompatible with the comedic nuances of the English language, you would be wrong. You see, WWE wanted Jinder to do an angle called... The Mahal Monitor.
According to Ryan Satin of Wrestling Sheet, the original pitch for Jinder’s main roster return was to have him literally doing a backstage hall monitor angle. The Mahal Monitor.
Quite why this was scrapped in favour of ‘let’s have him be WWE Champion for six months’ is anybody’s guess but, somewhere down the production line, the Mahal Monitor idea was canned.
Given how similar this sounds to Baron Corbin’s constable gimmick, which has ben one of the best character reinventions in recent memory, maybe it was for the best. Then again, maybe not.