Jinder Mahal says every championship he has won was a result of hard work, and he wasn’t the “experimental champion” people claim he was.
Jinder Mahal recently spoke with Louis Dangoor for GiveMeSport, and the topic of his polarizing 2017 WWE Championship reign was brought up. Mahal defeated Randy Orton for the title at that year’s Backlash pay-per-view and reigned for 170 days, but the title run was met with some criticism as some fans were vocal about believing it only came as a result of WWE looking to increase its footprint in the Indian market.
Mahal says thoughts like that just downplay his accomplishments, and he says the title reign is only a result of his hard work throughout his career.
“While I was WWE Champion, I was called the experiment, the unworthy champion, the worst champion of all time,” Mahal noted. “So this is just people downplaying my accomplishments. WWE Universe in India, their TV deals everything, were just as much in play when I was in 3MB and while I was released I do believe WWE Raw was then live on Sony.
“I wasn’t brought back to become WWE Champion, at that time they separated the rosters again, Raw and SmackDown, and they just needed some people who were TV-ready essentially to throw on and maybe highlight some of the newer talent,” he explained, “but somewhere along the line, I knew ‘Hey this is my way in. This is my foot in the door. I’m going to knock the whole door down and I’m going to become WWE Champion.’”
Mahal compared the situation to that or Drew McIntyre’s recent WWE title reign, noting that Drew wasn’t champion because of television deals, it was because he worked hard, and the same was true for his own title run.
“So that’s like me saying ‘Hey Drew, you were WWE Champion because WWE wanted to expand into the UK.’ Why is that? Why are people not saying that? Right now Drew is celebrated, I’m the one who was this experimental champion, which is untrue,” he stated. “I’ve worked hard for and I’ve earned every opportunity that I’ve ever been given, every championship that I’ve had I’ve worked very very hard for.”
Jinder Mahal would go on to lose the title to AJ Styles on the November 7, 2017 episode of WWE SmackDown in Manchester, England. Since then, he has won the United States Championship, and also won the WWE 24/7 Championship on two separate occasions.
Jinder Mahal will face off with Drew McIntyre at SummerSlam in Las Vegas on August 20; the updated match card can be viewed at this link.
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