2 Ups & 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Aug 15)

2. The Script Remains The Same

As if you couldn’t already tell, last night wasn’t good for Jinder Mahal. His contributions presented his act at its absolute worst, and while his main event with Cena was a major clunker, his show-opening in-ring promo was even worse.

‘The Modern Day Maharaja’ didn’t screw up. He didn’t stumble over his words or get distracted by the crowd. His delivery was probably exactly what he intended it to be, but the script was awful. “I love India,” “India loves me,” “you hate me because you’re xenophobes”: singing aside, it was exactly like every other Mahal promo you’ve heard since he became WWE Champion, and the company should’ve just cut and pasted one from a previous week, such was the lack of differentiation.

Shinsuke Nakamura eventually interrupted, to which everyone in the building breathed a sigh of relief. He kept things short, stating that America will celebrate when he takes Jinder’s title, and that was that. The segment came to an end with both men jawing at each other, but it built no excitement for their upcoming clash, and served only to fill time.