5 New Booking Directions For Former WWE Champion Jinder Mahal

The fortunes of Jinder Mahal appear to have taken a sharp downturn over recent weeks.

Not only did he lose the WWE Championship days removed from his champion versus champion mega-match with Brock Lesnar at Survivor Series, he also lost clean as a whistle to Triple H in front of the New Delhi crowd to whom he was billed as the top attraction.

To some, these developments are a sign that the company has now abandoned plans to turn the Modern Day Maharaja into its next franchise player - but that, given everything we've seen over the last six months, seems like a bold call (in fact, without much in the way of main even alternatives, it's likely he'll remain in the title picture going into next month's Royal Rumble).

Even the most ardent Jinder critics have to concede that the man - with his at-times great heel work and ever-improving ability in the ring - has a modicum of superstar potential, which can (theoretically) be untapped over the next 12 months with one or two booking tweaks.

So, what kind of things should they try?

Edge had his Edgeheads, CM Punk the Straight-Edge Society and Seth Rollins J&J Security. Main event heels in WWE, it seems, for some reason derive a measure of comfort from having a pair of hapless dog's bodies at their side at all times, despite their inability to ever protect them from harm.

Problem is, those guys had already made it to the top by themselves, whereas Jinder has - and this is no exaggeration - never won a big pay-per-view match without the aid of the Singh Brothers (or The Great Khali). His credibility, as a result, is in the gutter.

Happily, there are one or two fault-lines beginning to show in the relationship between the Modern Day Maharaja and his two sidekicks, both of whom were seem remonstrating with him in the ring on the eve of this month's Clash of Champions.

With a return to the mid-card (probably) imminent, now is the perfect time for him to ditch them altogether and go it alone. That way, his character gets some new impetus, and the SmackDown tag team division gets a new competitor - it's win-win.