WWE’s Problems Can Be Traced Back To This EXACT Moment
The same, crude mentality drove WWE’s partnership with the Saudi Arabia General Sports Authority. Jinder Mahal brought into focus and exemplified all of modern WWE’s ills. WWE became a money-making enterprise without even the vaguest pretence to the contrary. It was repellent stuff, and the audience responded by tuning out, by incremental orders of magnitude.
The reign broke the credibility of referees. That twirly-hands, you’re-outta-here thing they do sometimes, when a heel interferes too flagrantly? The Singh Brothers were never ejected from ringside despite their constant, predictable presence. Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, meanwhile, caught the ire of Daniel Bryan and Shane McMahon at the merest hint of shenanigans.
The selective rule enforcement only added to the malaise. WWE put itself under the microscope with this fateful decision, and revealed itself to be a company of just total narrative bullsh*t. WWE stacked bullsh*t on top of bullsh*t to prolong the Jinder Mahal reign, and it toppled over everything.
A guy nobody cared about won the WWE Title. Performers the crowd clearly cared about toiled in meaningless midcard obscurity. In stunt-casting Mahal—a 1980s foreign menace in presentation and in-ring style— WWE, fittingly, went backwards.
WWE broke every rule and all pretence of rules, both in narrative and business, with Jinder Mahal’s WWE Heavyweight Title reign. It was a moment of symbolic epiphany to the ‘WWE Universe’. Nothing made sense anymore. Investment became impossible. WWE wasn’t on fire in early 2017—Roman Reigns had bombed, the scripted promos were still lame, the opening TV segments still awful—but it never felt so futile.
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