Tomorrow evening, SmackDown Live! will put on, for the first time in its brand’s history, the Hell In A Cell pay-per-view event and it won’t be headlined by the WWE World Title match, even though it’s in the Hell In A Cell contraption, because of the failures of WWE, Jinder Mahal, and Shinsuke Nakamura during this months-long feud.
I honestly don’t know where to begin with this problem, but I’ll try during the spring of this year. Post-WrestleMania, (and a week after the reckless Jinder Mahal literally knocked out top WWE guy Finn Balor on a episode of RAW), Mahal was swapped to SmackDown Live! after an uneventful run on RAW, where he won a grand total of 1 match in almost a full year. Nobody thought this move would amount to anything because Mahal was so bad for so long, but we were wrong, boy were we wrong. You see, WWE was preparing to announce its first tour of India in 14 years, and well, Mahal is of Indian descent (he’s actually Canadian and may have never even visited India, but who cares about facts when there is something to be exploited by WWE), he’s “in shape”, so the WWE made him WWE Champion.
Now during Mahal’s now 5 month title reign, he’s only defeated 3 guys, Randy Orton (multiple times), Baron Corbin (who failed to cash in his Money In The Bank briefcase) and Shinsuke Nakamura. There are no highlights of Mahal’s reign. Why? He’s never won a single match clean. Even in the Punjabi Prison match with Orton at Money In The Bank, where nobody is supposed to get into the structure, it took the Singh Brothers and the returning Great Khali to help Mahal retain the title. Every title defense has been marred by interference and it has helped Mahal become one of the lowest WWE Champions in terms of TV ratings and house show attendance. Live show attendance for SmackDown Live! is nearing around 4,000 per show for a TV show!
At the time that Mahal was moving to SmackDown Live!, Shinsuke Nakamura was being promoted from NXT. Nakamura was viewed as a can’t miss prospect due to his unique entrances and his strong-style work in New Japan. However, WWE has made him miss. Nakamura has spent much of his time in the mid-card of SmackDown Live!, working 12-15 minute matches (at the most) with subpar talent that has caused him to look bad. He doesn’t appear motivated at all. In NXT, they were able to hide his deficiencies and didn’t have to have him talk on the microphone (he has limited English) because it was just a 1-hour show. Now with 2 hours every week, a smaller roster than RAW or even NXT, and 3-hour long pay-per-views the main event needs a talent that can be the whole package, and Nakamura is not that man.
Their SummerSlam match has been described by most critics in the professional wrestling world as one of the worst, laziest WWE title matches since the start of the millennium. All WWE did this time was just put the 2 inside a steel structure that somehow the Singh Brothers will get inside of and help Jinder Mahal retain the title, which he will likely hold it through the end of the year and make him one of the longest reigning WWE World title holders in history.
And all this for a guy because he’s big and is of Indian descent. I thought the WWE could do better.
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