History YMMV / JinderMahal

* CriticalBacklash: While Jinder Mahal is largely seen as a case study of how bad booking and a mishandled push to the moon can tank a World Champion, even tarnish their Championship in the eyes of fans, an increasingly common perspective is that one can hardly blame Jinder himself. It's generally agreed that he's an all-around decent worker and in-ring performer, and that he deserved better not in terms of accolades, but actual quality treatment from bookers to give him more to do than simply [[{{Jobber}} job]] and be a position he was never going to make look convincing no matter what he did. In early 2024, Tony Khan of Wrestling/AllEliteWrestling got in a Twitter controversy after mocking the booking decision for Jinder to have a Heavyweight title match against Wrestling/SethRollins despite having a year-long losing streak, where fans, colleagues, and other esteemed industry figures from Wrestling/BookerT to Wrestling/EricBischoff came to Jinder's defense, reinforcing that he's a professional who's earned more than continued burials.

* CriticalBacklash: While Jinder Mahal is largely seen as a case study of how bad booking and a mishandled push to the moon can tank a World Champion, even tarnish their Championship in the eyes of fans, an increasingly common perspective is that one can hardly blame Jinder himself. It's generally agreed that he was an all-around decent worker and in-ring performer, and that he deserved better not in terms of accolades, but actual quality treatment from bookers to give him more to do than simply [[{{Jobber}} job]] and be a position he was never going to make look convincing no matter what he did. In early 2024, Tony Khan of Wrestling/AllEliteWrestling got in a Twitter controversy after mocking the booking decision for Jinder to have a Heavyweight title match against Wrestling/SethRollins despite having a year-long losing streak, where fans, colleagues, and other esteemed industry figures from Wrestling/BookerT to Wrestling/EricBischoff came to Jinder's defense, reinforcing that he's a professional who's earned more than continued burials.

* CriticalBacklash: While Jinder Mahal is largely seen as a case study of how bad booking and a mishandled push to the moon can tank a World Champion, even tarnish their Championship in the eyes of fans, an increasingly common perspective is that one can hardly blame Jinder himself. It's generally agreed that he was an all-around decent worker and in-ring performer, and that he deserved better not in terms of accolades, but actual quality treatment from bookers to give him more to do than simply [[{{Jobber}} job]] and be a position he was never going to make look convincing no matter what he did. In early 2024, Tony Khan of Wrestling/AllEliteWrestling got in a Twitter controversy after mocking the booking decision for Jinder to have a Heavyweight title match against Wrestling/SethRollins despite having a year-long losing streak, fans, colleagues, and other esteemed industry figures from Wrestling/BookerT to Wrestling/EricBischoff came to Jinder's defense, reinforcing that he's a professional who's earned more than continued burials.

* CriticalBacklash: While Jinder Mahal is largely seen as a case study of how bad booking and a mishandled push to the moon can tank a World Champion, even tarnish their Championship in the eyes of fans, an increasingly common perspective is that one can hardly blame Jinder himself. It's generally agreed that he was an all-around decent worker and in-ring performer, and that he deserved better not in terms of accolades, but actual quality treatment from bookers to give him more to do than simply [[{{Jobber}} job]] and be a position he was never going to make look convincing no matter what he did.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical: Jinder's most recent push to the top where he gives political diatribes about how America is divided and how it needs ''him'' to unite everyone are eerily reminiscent of another Indian-American by the name of Vivek Ramaswamy who, in very recent times, rose to prominence as a Republican candidate spouting right wing MAGA talking points. Had Vivek not risen to prominence in 2023, one has to seriously wonder if Jinder would've suddenly been given another main event push right at the beginning of 2024 against Wrestling/SethRollins, being granted chances to trade barbs with The Rock, and taking up a political persona out of nowhere stating that he's the best man to unite Americans.

* AmericansHateTingle: A pretty unfortunate case of this as before his infamous 2017 push, [[MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales Jinder was fairly well-liked by Indian fans in his earlier years]], if only because he's one of the more well-known wrestlers of Indian descent in the big W. His misguided World Champion mega-push, however, dramatically soured Indian opinion on him, as on top of the contrived, transparently pandering reasoning for the push, fans were annoyed by WWE trying to have their cake and eat it too by pushing him as a lovable babyface to the Indian market ''and'' as a generic ForeignWrestlingHeel domestically, making him seem like an unflattering and disingenuous representation of their country (not helped by how Jinder was born and raised in Canada, something detractors are very quick to throw out to discredit him as "Indian").

* CriticalBacklash: While Jinder Mahal is largely seen as a case study of how bad booking and a mishandled push to the moon can tank even a World Champion in the eyes of fans, an increasingly common perspective is that one can hardly blame Jinder himself. It's generally agreed that he was an all-around decent worker and in-ring performer, and that he deserved better not in terms of accolades, but actual quality treatment from bookers to give him more to do than simply [[{{Jobber}} job]] and be a position he was never going to make look convincing no matter what he did.

* BaseBreakingCharacter: His completely out of nowhere push after ''[=WrestleMania 33=]'' in 2017 certainly rubbed a lot of fans in different ways. On one hand, detractors cited his perceived lack of in-ring skill, suspicion of steroid use, boring character, constant reliance upon others to win matches (even against midcarders), and his utter void of creative attention beyond jobbing prior to the sudden push. On the other hand, his opponent was Randy Orton, who has his own sizable contingent of anti-fans who accuse him of many of the same things; not to mention Orton was just winding down a pretty one sided feud in which he had totally destroyed and ruined the momentum of popular heel Bray Wyatt, had put on a series of disappointing matches, and rarely if ever lost, leaving many hungry to see someone humiliate him; plus there's fans who think that Mahal does make an effective heel and that he can do well if given the right push. Demonstrated at ''Wrestling/{{Backlash}} 2017'', in his world title match with Orton where half the crowd was clearly behind him and the other half behind Randy. There were actually people cheering when he won, though the camera's quickly cut to those faces who were visibly shocked, presumably to preserve his heel status. Since the initial push however he has fallen much more soundly into TheScrappy territory again with his poor performances, bad booking as a heel (being unable to beat even lower-midcard Faces cleanly) and incredibly dull feud with Wrestling/RandyOrton (himself a base breaker), as well as Jinder himself routinely showing very tired and cliche heel promos and tactics; very ''few'' unironic Jinder fans are to be heard from presently, though whether this might change with time remains to be seen.

* EthnicScrappy: Many accused WWE of pushing Jinder only to try and appeal to the Indian market (where the WWE Network recently launched, and were stated to go on tour after Backlash). Sadly, it didn’t work- it turns out the people of India didn’t care for Jinder at all, they preferred actual proven stars.
* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments: When [[Wrestling/AllEliteWrestling Tony Khan]] took to [[Website/TwitterX Twitter]] complaining about Jinder getting a title shot against Wrestling/SethRollins despite having not won a match in a year, fans, co-workers, ''and'' [[Wrestling/EricBischoff other well-known figures in the industry]] were quick to put Tony on blast for trying to bury a talent that's never worked for him, showing Jinder the most support that he's had since his infamous WWE title reign.

** Many detractors consider Jinder to be an inferior Wrestling/MuhammadHassan, since, like Hassan, he's being pushed to the moon out of nowhere (Hassan would have won the World Heavyweight Championship if not for the incident that destroyed his career) and his gimmick is basically "[[MistakenForRacist I hate Americans because they're all racist!]]" Time will tell if Jinder can subvert this.
** He's also been getting compared to Wrestling/JohnBradshawLayfield, as JBL was also in a not-quite-enviable position on the card (the APA on its last legs) before getting an out-of-nowhere push to the main event around the post-''[=WrestleMania=]'' season and winning the WWE Championship. However, while JBL's push also hit some snags (he was reportedly the lowest-drawing WWE Champion since [[Wrestling/KevinNash Diesel]]) JBL's push is still agreed to have went over ''far'' better than Jinder's, because JBL was so skilled at playing a despicable heel and could actually win matches without relying on outside help.

* TakeThatScrappy: Aside from losing the WWE Championship on free TV to fan favourite AJ Styles, weeks beforehand Wrestling/PaulHeyman addressed Jinder's challenge to Brock Lesnar with [[YouHaveGotToBeKiddingMe utter disbelief]] and openly mocked him for even thinking he could stand on even footing to Lesnar, even edging on WorkedShoot and LeaningOnTheFourthWall by basically stating that the only reason Jinder got the WWE Championship was because [=SmackDown=] got depleted from top draws due to the Superstar Shake-up. Compare and contrast to Heyman's genuine fear, both for Lesnar's title run and his own personal safety, of Wrestling/SamoaJoe and Wrestling/BraunStrowman, and him singing praises to AJ after AJ won the title from Jinder and became Lesnar's new challenger.
* XPacHeat: As many of the entries here make clear, whatever benefit of the doubt the fanbase had given Jinder was long gone before his WWE title run was even half over. Many had begun including Jinder as one of the worst WWE champions of all time even before his reign actually ended.

* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments: When Tony Khan took to [[Website/TwitterX Twitter]] complaining about Jinder getting a title shot against Wrestling/SethRollins despite having not won a match in a year (which is untrue -- Jinder had defeated Julius Creed at the previous year's New Year's Evil), fans, co-workers, ''and'' [[Wrestling/EricBischoff other well-known figures in the industry]] were quick to put Tony on blast for trying to bury a talent that's never worked for him, showing Jinder the most support that he's had since his infamous WWE title reign.

* BaseBreakingCharacter: His completely out of nowhere push after ''[=WrestleMania 33=]'' in 2017 certainly rubbed a lot of fans in different ways. On one hand, detractors cited his perceived lack of in-ring skill, suspicion of steroid use, boring character and his utter void of creative attention beyond jobbing prior to the sudden push. On the other hand, his opponent was Randy Orton, who has his own sizable contingent of anti-fans who accuse him of many of the same things; not to mention Orton was just winding down a pretty one sided feud in which he had totally destroyed and ruined the momentum of popular heel Bray Wyatt, had put on a series of disappointing matches, and rarely if ever lost, leaving many hungry to see someone humiliate him; plus there's fans who think that Mahal does make an effective heel and that he can do well if given the right push. Demonstrated at ''Wrestling/{{Backlash}} 2017'', in his world title match with Orton where half the crowd was clearly behind him and the other half behind Randy. There were actually people cheering when he won, though the camera's quickly cut to those faces who were visibly shocked, presumably to preserve his heel status. Since the initial push however he has fallen much more soundly into TheScrappy territory again with his poor performances, bad booking as a heel (being unable to beat even lower-midcard Faces cleanly) and incredibly dull feud with Wrestling/RandyOrton (himself a base breaker), as well as Jinder himself routinely showing very tired and cliche heel promos and tactics; very ''few'' unironic Jinder fans are to be heard from presently, though whether this might change with time remains to be seen.

* EthnicScrappy: Many accused WWE of pushing Jinder only to try and appeal to the Indian market (where the WWE Network recently launched, and were stated to go on tour after Backlash).

** He's also been getting compared to Wrestling/JohnBradshawLayfield, as JBL was also in a not-quite-enviable position on the card (the APA on its last legs) before getting an out-of-nowhere push to the main event around the post-''[=WrestleMania=]'' season and winning the WWE Championship. However, while JBL's push also hit some snags (he was reportedly the lowest-drawing WWE Champion since [[Wrestling/KevinNash Diesel]]) JBL's push is still agreed to have went over ''far'' better than Jinder's, because JBL was so skilled at playing a despicable heel.

** This sentiment fired up again when he won the US title in a match with three men (Rusev, Randy Orton and Bobby Roode) who all were far more popular with fans, particularly Rusev, who was the one Jinder pinned to win the match; the [[XPacHeat fan disgust]] was very audible.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: OK, so maybe Jinder becoming WWE Champion wasn't a great idea to start with, but what really took it to the level of an absolute catastrophe that did serious damage to the prestige of the belt was how WWE Creative barely put even the most ''token'' effort into handling it properly. He wasn't given any character other than [[ForeignWrestlingHeel "cheating America-hating heel"]], which is basically the white noise of heel character booking, and the only change made to his style to give him the "credibility" to beat stars like Randy Orton and Shinsuke Nakamura was giving him the Singh Brothers as flunkies to run interference and get beaten up so he could hit the Khallas off the distraction for the pin, meaning this is exactly what happened in almost ''every. Single. Match.'' Also, if he was being made champion to try to appeal to Indian audiences, then ''why was he a heel?!''[[note]]Actually that one's pretty simple to explain- his character just being "I hate America because I am foreign" worked perfectly in Vince [=McMahon's=] mind as a face character to Indian audiences because he sincerely believes that all foreigners ''do'' hate America.[[/note]] Adam Blampied of [=WrestleTalk/partsFUNknown=] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVBP1ptogc4 fantasy booked a much better angle]] (under sufferance) simply by a) leaning into the fact that Jinder really ''didnt'' have the credibility to be WWE Champion and could only be a fluke winner and b) giving him a character that isn't just the default ForeignWrestlingHeel, resulting in a story that made sense, didn't damage the credibility of the WWE Championship, and even ideally got Jinder over. But the actual WWE Creative [[CreatorsApathy simply weren't even interested in trying]] and booked themselves a perfect [[Website/WrestleCrap Gooker Winner]].

* HolyShitQuotient: Jinder Mahal winning the WWE Championship at Backlash. YMMV on whether it was insanity or genius, but it was certainly unexpected.

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Played with. WWE is sometimes accused of trolling its smarkier segment of its audience with some of its booking decisions. One typical smark complaint is that WWE, on its main roster, relies on the same 4-6 performers in a division and passes the title around between them to the exclusion of everyone else. The more cynical of wrestling fans would take Mahal's promotion to the main event as WWE blatantly going, "Here's someone different. You like him?"

* {{Expy}}: A muscular ForeignWrestlingHeel with an inflated ego and a cruiserweight-sized HammyHerald as a manager, who was pushed to the main event title picture at least partially to appeal to a certain demographic of fans, despite lukewarm reactions at best from the larger audience. Then, after the initial run tailed off, he slid back down the card. This fairly accurately describes Jinder Mahal's second run. It also fairly accurately describes the first WWE run of Wrestling/AlbertoDelRio.

* BaseBreakingCharacter: His completely out of nowhere push after ''[=WrestleMania 33=]'' in 2017 certainly rubbed a lot of fans in different ways. On one hand, detractors cited his perceived lack of in-ring skill, suspicion of steroid use, boring character and his utter void of creative attention beyond jobbing prior to the sudden push. On the other hand, his opponent was Randy Orton, who has his own sizable contingent of anti-fans who accuse him of many of the same things; not to mention Orton was just winding down a pretty one sided feud in which he had totally destroyed and ruined the momentum of popular heel Bray Wyatt, had put on a series of disappointing matches, and rarely if ever lost, leaving many hungry to see someone humiliate him; plus there's fans who think that Mahal does make an effective heel and that he can do well if given the right push. Demonstrated at ''Wrestling/{{Backlash}} 2017'', in his world title match with Orton where half the crowd was clearly behind him and the other half behind Randy. There were actually people cheering when he won, though the camera's quickly cut to those faces who were visibly shocked, presumably to preserve his heel status. Since the initial push however he has fallen much more soundly into TheScrappy territory again with his poor performances, bad booking as a heel (being unable to beat even lower-midcard Faces cleanly) and incredibly dull feud with RandyOrton (himself a base breaker), as well as Jinder himself routinely showing very tired and cliche heel promos and tactics; very ''few'' unironic Jinder fans are to be heard from presently, though whether this might change with time remains to be seen.

* TheScrappy: As many of the entries here make clear, whatever benefit of the doubt the fanbase had given Jinder was long gone before his WWE title run was even half over. Many had begun including Jinder as one of the worst WWE champions of all time even before his reign actually ended.

* CreatorsPet: The reveal that Vince [=McMahon=] was personally writing a lot of Mahal's promos and material received unfavorable comparison with Vince doing the same to Wrestling/RomanReigns, making a lot of fans perceive Mahal as being an overpushed pet project of Vince's, once again being forced down the throats of fans. This intensified even further when he failed to have a good match with Wrestling/ShinsukeNakamura and yet was given a win in the exact same fashion as nearly every win he has had as champion (i. e. the Singh Brothers interfere, Mahal's opponent dispaches them, Mahal seizes the opportunity to hit his finishing move on his opponent for the win). Earlier in the same week he also ruined Wrestling/BaronCorbin cashing in the Wrestling/MoneyInTheBank briefcase (though Wrestling/JohnCena also played a part in that), which has led to many accusing Jinder's push of doing great damage to other, more worthy talents.
** This sentiment fired up again when he was awarded the US title in a match with three men (Rusev, Randy Orton and Bobby Roode) who all were far more popular with fans, particularly Rusev who Jinder pinned to win the match; the [[XPacHeat fan disgust]] was very audible.

** He's also been getting compared to Wrestling/JohnBradshawLayfield, as JBL was also in a not-quite-enviable position on the card (the APA on its last legs) before getting an out-of-nowhere push to the main event and winning the WWE Championship. However, while JBL's push also hit some snags (he was reportedly the lowest-drawing WWE Champion since [[Wrestling/KevinNash Diesel]]) JBL's push is still agreed to have went over ''far'' better than Jinder's, because JBL was so skilled at playing a despicable heel.

* TakeThatScrappy: Aside from losing the WWE Championship on free TV to fan favourite AJ Styles, weeks beforehand Wrestling/PaulHeyman addressed Jinder's challenge to Brock Lesnar with [[YouHaveGotToBeKiddingMe utter disbelief]] and openly mocked him for even thinking he could stand on even footing to Lesnar, even edging on WorkedShoot and LeaningOnTheFourthWall by basically stating that the only reason Jinder got the WWE Championship was because [=SmackDown=] got depleted from top draws due to the Superstar Shake-up. Compare and contrast to Heyman's genuine fear, both for Lesnar's title run and his own personal safety, of Wrestling/SamoaJoe and Wrestling/BraunStrowman, and him singing praises to AJ.

d* BaseBreakingCharacter: His completely out of nowhere push after ''[=WrestleMania 33=]'' in 2017 certainly rubbed a lot of fans in different ways. On one hand, detractors cited his perceived lack of in-ring skill, suspicion of steroid use, boring character and his utter void of creative attention beyond jobbing prior to the sudden push. On the other hand, his opponent was Randy Orton, who has his own sizable contingent of anti-fans who accuse him of many of the same things; not to mention Orton was just winding down a pretty one sided feud in which he had totally destroyed and ruined the momentum of popular heel Bray Wyatt, had put on a series of disappointing matches, and rarely if ever lost, leaving many hungry to see someone humiliate him; plus there's fans who think that Mahal does make an effective heel and that he can do well if given the right push. Demonstrated at ''Wrestling/{{Backlash}} 2017'', in his world title match with Orton where half the crowd was clearly behind him and the other half behind Randy. There were actually people cheering when he won, though the camera's quickly cut to those faces who were visibly shocked, presumably to preserve his heel status. Since the initial push however he has fallen much more soundly into TheScrappy territory again with his poor performances, bad booking as a heel (being unable to beat even lower-midcard Faces cleanly) and incredibly dull feud with RandyOrton (himself a base breaker), as well as Jinder himself routinely showing very tired and cliche heel promos and tactics; very ''few'' unironic Jinder fans are to be heard from presently, though whether this might change with time remains to be seen.