10 Fascinating Facts About Famous Wrestling Titles
5. A Major Indictment Of Jinder Mahal's WWE Title Reign
Jinder Mahal's reign as WWE Champion in 2017 truly took the piss out of an audience who, fatigued by the relentless Roman Reigns push, were already seething at the idea that the promotion knew better than the customer.
Jinder wasn't even an appropriately built bore, à la Vladimir Kozlov. At least then, Vince McMahon told the correct story credibly. Nobody gave a sh*t, of course, but he invested a lot of time into theoretically making the public care. Kozlov rampaged through the roster, even the Undertaker, and was the new big bad you could take seriously (if he weren't so punishingly dull).
Mahal in contrast was a jobber, won a match, and then became WWE Champion because WWE, transparently and with zero regard for your investment and intelligence, wanted to crack an emerging market.
The content of the reign was damning. Dull, basic, heat-bereft matches. Race-bait promos. Constant interferences from the Singh Brothers that was never punished with the traditional cage stip (Mahal actually chose the Punjabi Prison gimmick at Battleground himself).
The length was just as much as an indictment; at 170 days, Mahal's WWE title run was in fiction more nominally impressive than Edge (139 combined), Ric Flair (118), and Mankind (36).