5 Burning Issues For WWE Raw Tonight (Oct 23)

Shinsuke Nakamura had seen it happen in other people's lives, now it was happening in his.

Gazing up at the spotlights that shone through the mesh Hell In A Cell structure at the last SmackDown Live! pay-per-view after a single Khallas, the kaleidoscope effect peering back down was merely a brutal reminder that the loss he'd just taken wasn't even in the show's eponymous main event.

And like the joke isn't funny anymore, the debate isn't even worth having. For all the reasons pored over again and again by hand-wringing observers searching for meaning in all the wrong places, Jinder Mahal remains WWE Champion regardless of how persistently p*ss-poor his entire act is.

And yet, he's again in the headlines. Fresh off doing the publicity rounds for the long-awaited India tour Triple H forgot to advertise him for, the 'Modern Day Maharaja' tried to drum up interest in the United States with a blockbuster challenge to Brock Lesnar for the Survivor Series.

With painful irony, it wasn't even the talking point of the week following the earth-shattering announcement that Kurt Angle and AJ Styles would wrestle at Tables, Ladders and Chairs.

It did, however, trigger the news that the Universal Champion would grace Monday Night Raw with his presence to answer the challenge. If the sum yield of Jinder Mahal's first (and hopefully only) run with the title was the most bombastic Paul Heyman up-sell of all time, it might not have been completely without merit.

Well, it's Yes, isn't it?

Like the Roman Reigns/Brock Lesnar rematch nobody desperately desires, it appears as though the good ship WWE is sailing headfirst into a brand new iceberg. Or at least two physiques chiselled like one.

Outside of his explosive encounter with Goldberg at WrestleMania, 'The Beast' has been on autopilot since 2015, sleepwalking through matches with The Undertaker and Randy Orton as well as humbling Samoa Joe and Braun Strowman in dispiriting displays more damaging to the 'Destroyer' and 'Monster Among Men' than anything else they've yet experienced on the WWE main roster.

Far from dining at the top table as it once was, a date with Brock now comes with a self-served side of suplex that leaves an aftertaste sourer than the main course itself. Furthermore, Jinder Mahal is yet to have a single encounter since winning the WWE Title that remotely justifies one of the most tone-deaf pushes in company history. It's hard to imagine him breaking his duck with the man Dean Ambrose outed as having 'no interest' in creativity in his matches.

It's morbidly fascinating at least, imagining just what a trainwreck that match will be on the night. It's perhaps best to look at the remainder of Mahal's run until WrestleMania hopefully provides a saviour.