10 Storylines WWE ENJOYED Ruining
2. Jinder Mahal's Boom And Bust
Time is getting kinder to Jinder Mahal's WWE Championship run, if only because WWE at large gets crueller towards its audience.
The manner in which Brock Lesnar flattened Kofi Kingston for that same title was a terse reminder that the thing only really matters now when the company tell you so. When the 'Modern Day Maharaja' dethroned Randy Orton a month removed from being a rank-and-file jobber at Backlash 2017, the shock was such that WWE spent as long looking for forlorn faces in the crowd to express it as they did the new titleholder.
Mahal looked a million dollars and it was thought he could draw the same in markets WWE hadn't fully tapped into, but his elevation felt far, far too forced. Fans never embraced it, and unlike natural comparison John Bradshaw Layfield, Mahal never particularly grew into the role as a performer. Even before he lost the title to AJ Styles ahead of a potentially ludicrous Survivor Series bout with Brock Lesnar, Paul Heyman mocked the very idea of his existence and the match in a scathing assessment of his failure in the role.
Well beaten in rematches against Styles in December, he jobbed to Triple H on the one international house show he was supposedly the draw for, and was working comedy spots with The New Day the next month.