YE OF LITTLE FAITH

[KaiserGlider]

The Maharaja saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. - Jinder 5:21:17

The Maharaja said it would come to pass, and so it did. And on that day which shall be remembered as The Great Unhinderance, the Mahal was not stalled, and the Jinder remained unhindered. Among us only myself and Brother @Hanley! had faith in Him, so we now have a place at His side. Will the rest of you nonbelievers accept The Maharaja as your savior?

[Circled Square]

I always had faith in clean piss Mahal. Vince loves him for knocking out that midget Balor, and probably forced Orton to job to him to work Triple H into a shoot

[Everlong]

HOLY FUCK THEY ACTUALLY DID IT?!?!?!

[DBSoT]

The good news is that anybody can win the WWE championship now. It is officially worthless. They might as well have the US championship main event every Smackdown show. Yesterday also confirmed three of my worst fears.

1) That WWE would put the WWE title on a jobber with no actual build
2) That Jinder would look as bad in the ring as possible
3) In winning the belt, the winner would still look like a low carder. He needed various distractions and Orton with a bad arm to even get some shots in.

[Messiah]

This isn't just a bad booking decision. This is the kind of decision that leads to PLUMMETING ratings (which, ever since Mahal has been in the main event scene, has been the case). The kind of decision that makes someone like me, who defended the company as hard as anyone a couple of months ago, give up. This killed my motivation to watch anything they put out, especially on SmackDown. The show has been terrible since WrestleMania. Absolutely dreadful. And now Mahal is the World Champion. Disgraceful.

I didn't watch Backlash but apparently Mahal/Orton stunk, which is what any logical human being would expect. Except for the WWE I suppose. I honestly can't think of a single thing the WWE has done in the last 10 years worse than this.

I'll probably cancel by Network subscription, at least until SummerSlam. I can't imagine I will have any interest in watching anything WWE-related until then, if that.

[Circled Square]

You seriously can't talk about plummeting ratings anymore though it's a downward trend. Even the great workrate guys like Rollins and Owens drove the ratings into the dumpster.

[prophet]

Lmao.

Vince trolling Hunter by having a jobber crush all his guys.

[DBSoT]

This isn't just a bad booking decision. This is the kind of decision that leads to PLUMMETING ratings (which, ever since Mahal has been in the main event scene, has been the case). The kind of decision that makes someone like me, who defended the company as hard as anyone a couple of months ago, give up. This killed my motivation to watch anything they put out, especially on SmackDown. The show has been terrible since WrestleMania. Absolutely dreadful. And now Mahal is the World Champion. Disgraceful.

I didn't watch Backlash but apparently Mahal/Orton stunk, which is what any logical human being would expect. Except for the WWE I suppose. I honestly can't think of a single thing the WWE has done in the last 10 years worse than this.

I'll probably cancel by Network subscription, at least until SummerSlam. I can't imagine I will have any interest in watching anything WWE-related until then, if that.

Watch NXT Takeover: Chicago. It will at least give you some hope that WWE still has the ability to entertain. Besides the SD Tag titles match, every match on Takeover was better than Backlash.

[Hanley!]

I thought it was possible that they might put the title on Jinder. My guess was that he was going to win by disqualification, but I'm not exactly surprised that he won the title. But then in another way, I'm stunned that he's actually champion.

I'm with Messiah on this one. There's nothing good about this. This kills any level of optimism I have for this product. Nothing means anything anymore. It was bad before, but this brings it to a whole new level. Or it's just the proof of how bad things already were. The WWE title has now been won by a jobber who's not talented and not over. Make a list of the 10 traits that a successful WWE champion needs most and Jinder has 0/10 of them.

This is a little funny. It's so ridiculous that people aren't being entirely negative about it online. It's great fodder for trolls and it's good fuel for piss-taking. But it's bad news for the people actually watching the shows. A number which is thankfully reducing. Bad promos, bad matches and a title that's no longer worth fighting over. Smackdown will be the pits under Mahal.

I considered cancelling my Network subscription today. Thankfully I watched Takeover on Saturday and that was enough to make me reconsider. And it is still great value for money. But when New Japan World is cheaper and they're putting out tons of great wrestling right now with the Best of the Super Juniors tournament, the Network subscription is becoming a little more difficult to justify.

Smackdown is shit right now. Back at the start of Styles' title reign, people were raving about the booking (it wasn't great but it was simple and effective). What the hell happened? 5 WWE champions within 4 months, and most of those changes didn't mean a damn thing. It's going to take a while to right this ship now, even if the bookers pull their heads out of their asses immediately. Which I wouldn't be too optimistic about.

I will say that I'm rooting for Mahal to turn things around. Because I've long been a fan of the relative prestige of the WWE championship (compared to their old WHC or the Universal title) and I hate to see someone who's completely worthless down in the record books as the 50th champion.

But while I'm holding out hope that he might somehow find something, I'm not going to hang around and wait for this transformation to unfold. There's too much good wrestling out there to waste time on this.

[Everlong]

Jinder Mahal doesn't even have any merch on the WWE online shop.

THE WWE CHAMPION DOESN'T HAVE ANY MERCH



God this is so fucking bad, it's hilarious.

[The Legend]

This has got to be a Kane situation right? It's like the WWE says, "Oh you think we won't surprise you with this guy winning? Watch this!" Then "Holy crap, now what do we do?" "Just give it back to Orton."

[Hanley!]

This has got to be a Kane situation right? It's like the WWE says, "Oh you think we won't surprise you with this guy winning? Watch this!" Then "Holy crap, now what do we do?" "Just give it back to Orton."

Orton shouldn't have it either though. Nobody cares about him right now.

Last night's show would have been viewed more favourably all round if Mahal had upset Orton for the US title in the middle of the show and Owens had retained the WWE title against Styles in the main event.

[KaiserGlider]

Maybe I could get pissed off about this if I took the time, but at the moment I'm too busy LAUGHING MY ASS OFF

I understand why so many people think this is very bad decision. But THAT bad? The worst thing in ten years? Nah. Here's where I stand on this: Orton was a boring champion. He did nothing for me. Jinder winning the belt was the best part of last night's show. It was the most exciting thing that happened and it was the most I was into the show. I was looking forward to seeing the massive reactions it would trigger within the entire wrestling community, and by god it did not disappoint, lol. This is not the worst thing that has happened in wrestling in 10 years, this is the the funniest thing that has happened in wrestling in 10 years. To me things are not truly dire until the future looks unbearably boring, and there's no sign of that here.

I'll list some decisions which I thought were worse than this one: Batista winning the 2014 Rumble, The Great Khali winning the world title (The Maharaja can talk and wrestle, Khali could not do neither at all), CM Punk losing his momentum in the fall of 2011, and even recently Charlotte losing her PPV win streak at Fastlane.

People are even threatening to cancel their Network subscriptions, even though there's still Raw and NXT - and saying Smackdown is awful, even though AJ Styles, Shinsuke Nakamura, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, etc are on the roster. I get that when the top belt on a show gets devalued, it makes everything feel like it matters less than it should matter. But at the same time, it's weird how people are so willing to ignore all these assets because of the current title scene. And I disagree that it will take a while to "fix" Smackdown. If they put the belt on Styles and have a month of good shows, I guarantee that almost nobody will be upset about this anymore. That's how it usually goes in wrestling, especially now with the strength of the rosters and the amount of content.

I really do agree that this devalues the WWE Championship though. In the past 3-4 months both of the WWE title and the Universal title have been drastically devalued, from Goldberg winning it to Lesnar disappearing with it to this. Time will hopefully heal this. An argument could be made that Sheamus was a worse WWE Champion the first time he won it from Cena in like his first PPV match. I don't know, I'm interested to see how far Jinder can go. This would have been a lot worse if there weren't two brands and two world champions.

But I digress. The Maharaja's name has been used in vain far too many times in this thread. So much hate. They hate him for what he looks like, they hate him for how he speaks and where he comes from. But The Mahajara learned how to overcome these emotions, and look what he achieved. The infidels scream "steroids", but I know the secret to The Mahajara's power lies elsewhere.

And The Maharaja said, “forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they posted blasphemies to deride His accomplishments. - Mahal 5:22:17

As our sensei teaches us, you must rise above hate and strive to find inner peace. Shanti, my friends. Shanti.

[Messiah]

The Great Khali winning the World Heavyweight Championship was definitely a better decision than this. Not arguing that Khali is better than Mahal (they both are garbage), but it wasn't like the WWE had a lot of options beyond Khali. Edge, Undertaker, and Henry were all out of action by that point. Benoit was moved to ECW. MVP and Hardy were too occupied in a rivalry to be moved up to the title picture. The only other options were Kane and Batista, both dull options. Not to mention Khali was FAR more credible than Mahal, it isn't even close. Batista winning the 2014 Royal Rumble was bad, but you could still say it was more logical than Mahal winning the World Title - and that is saying something. And this was without a doubt worse than Charlotte losing at Fast Lane.

Just because Orton was a bad champion doesn't make Mahal winning it from him any better. I don't get how anyone can actually defend the move. There is no upside to it. Mahal has no credibility. He's not a good performer. There are at least 50 guys in the WWE better than Mahal.

And SmackDown has a lot of talent, that is true, but that doesn't change the fact the show has sucked lately. It's been horrible. I find it hard to believe you have actually watched SmackDown recently and disagree. It has been a bad show, the complete opposite of where it was months ago. Styles/Owens are engaged in a dull rivalry with no purpose, Mahal/Orton is the main event scene, and the Women's division is a mess. Breezango has been about the only bright spot.

[Hanley!]

This does shake things up but in exactly the wrong way. Yeah, it's definitely something different. But it's not something good. When people talk about change in WWE, they're not clamoring for a champion who's shittier than the ones they're used to, and less credible and less over to boot.

I'm not sure you could really classify this as exciting, but if it is then it's exciting the way an earthquake would be. It's almost impossible to ignore or feel nothing about, but it's not going to result in anything good and it's hard to know just how bad it's going to get.

How are we supposed to care now? Is it even an accomplishment to win the WWE title anymore? It changes hands more than once a month and the most recent guy to win it is a nobody. When someone else wins the nothing belt off the nothing wrestler in the next few weeks, it won't mean a hell of a lot. He's already lost to just about everybody. Is it going to be any sort of surprise when he reverts to his default status? Having the title doesn't even make Mahal a main event guy in today's WWE. He's just the guy who has the title. Someone else will have it in a few minutes. Doesn't matter. None of this is supposed to mean anything anyway.

I find myself feeling bad for some of the guys on the roster who have never held the title. Guys who have worked hard, developed a reputation for themselves on the indies, won over the public, finally got their shot at WWE, proved that they could get over in front of a world wide audience ... and then were beaten to a WWE title reign by Jinder fucking Mahal. It must feel like a kick in the gut. And now even if they do get their title reign soon, it's not going to mean anything. The belt is on life support.

This is the first time in a while that the constantly overused phrase "anything can happen in WWE" has rang true to me. But I'm not so sure it's a good thing anymore.

[JDD]

I thought this was a great moment. One of the first times in a while the WWE actually suprised me with a match outcome. I think Jinder has a great look, and the match with Orton wasnt terrible. He even cut a good promo on Smackdown this week.

I wouldnt look too much in to the ratings either. Ratings for live tv are down across the board and more and more people are cutting cable each day. Ratings dont matter as much as they used to. If Stone Cold was wrestling in his prime today the ratings still wouldnt be anywhere close to the attitude era ratings.

There's so much good on SD right now that I dont really mind a Jinder reign. At least he's a heel who gets heat.

[The Legend]

I thought this was a great moment. One of the first times in a while the WWE actually suprised me with a match outcome. I think Jinder has a great look, and the match with Orton wasnt terrible. He even cut a good promo on Smackdown this week.

I wouldnt look too much in to the ratings either. Ratings for live tv are down across the board and more and more people are cutting cable each day. Ratings dont matter as much as they used to. If Stone Cold was wrestling in his prime today the ratings still wouldnt be anywhere close to the attitude era ratings.

There's so much good on SD right now that I dont really mind a Jinder reign. At least he's a heel who gets heat.

Vince is that you?

[KaiserGlider]

Vince is that you?

[AkydefGoldberg]

With the Maharaja gimmick, they could have made him this upper class, elite royalty type sneering at everyone else and fused it with Indian culture etc but from the very vague bits of I've seen it seems to be anti-America etc which is boring..

[PorkChop]

With the Maharaja gimmick, they could have made him this upper class, elite royalty type sneering at everyone else and fused it with Indian culture etc but from the very vague bits of I've seen it seems to be anti-America etc which is boring..

There are three certainties in life:

- Death
- Taxes
- WWE wrestlers of middle-Eastern descent being given an anti-America gimmick