Jinder Mahal certainly has not been the most popular WWE Champion of all-time. Mahal won the WWE Championship on May 21st at Backlash. Since then, he has been able to hold onto the title with a ton of assistance from the Singh Brothers. Mahal defeated Shinsuke Nakamura at WWE SummerSlam by planting him with a Khallas after Samir and Sunil Singh interfered in the match. Mahal will once again have to defend his title against Nakamura next month, but this time surrounded by steel at WWE Hell in a Cell.
John Cena Sr. was a guest on Boston Wrestling Sports’ Wrestling Insiders show. During the interview, Cena Sr. was asked about Mahal as WWE Champion. Cena Sr. responded with the following:
“I do not think he is a good champion. I don’t think he is a worthy champion. I think they need to get somebody in there that can get people involved in the championship matches. I don’t think that he is the man for the job. The fans are going to get pretty tired pretty fast. They didn’t like Mahal to begin with and not because he is a good heel, it is because he cannot wrestle.”
Host of the show, Dan Mirade, compared Mahal’s reign to JBL’s title reign leading up until WrestleMania 21. Mirade stated that it has been a comparable run because it took some time for fans to warm up to JBL. However, fans wound up getting into it and every time he worked with a new babyface, the fans thought that this would finally be the guy to defeat him. Mirade believes that we are going to see the same thing with Mahal going forward. The fans will continue to think that someone is going to take the title from him, but Mahal will wind up holding it for a long time.
Cena Sr. didn’t like that take and stated that Mahal “wasn’t even close” to JBL. Â He went on to say that Mahal is only champion to capture the Indian market and isn’t on JBL’s level as a performer. Cena Sr. also claimed that it is too early for Shinsuke Nakamura to win the WWE Championship. Mirade said that sometimes he has trouble understanding Nakamura and Cena Sr. suggested that WWE bring back managers to help wrestlers like Nakamura connect with the crowd. You can check out the entire conversation in the video below.
