5 Ups & 3 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Sept 12)

1. Jinder Mahal Kills The Crowd

Jinder Mahal has developed a habit of cutting a near-identical promo every single week since entering the main scene, and now we know why. If this is what happens when ‘The Modern Day Maharaja’ tries to mess with his format, he’d be better off reciting the same seven or eight lines every week, because his promo on Shinsuke Nakamura was absolutely atrocious.

Vince McMahon was probably laughing himself silly, but nobody else was. In one of the most ill-advised comedy segments you’ll see all year, Jinder tried to rip on Nak by attributing his outlandish mannerisms to constipation, making Godzilla jokes (because Japan), and calling him a Michael Jackson rip-off. It was real bottom of the barrel stuff: the kind of segment that makes your toes curl with cringe, and the likes of which should never be seen on SmackDown again.

Mahal signed off by telling Shinsuke to walk away, and the night’s biggest low point concluded without an appearance from ‘The King Of Strong Style.’ It presented the WWE Champion in his worst form, with the wacky comedy coming off extremely poorly, convincing nobody of Jinder’s versatility as a performer. Maybe the identikit anti-USA stuff isn’t so horrendous after all?

No, it definitely is.