YMMV / Jinder Mahal

• Americans Hate Tingle: A pretty unfortunate case of this as before his infamous 2017 push, 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 Foreign Wrestling Heel 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"), and this native disinterest ultimately cratered the Indian tour that Jinder's Championship title push sought to bring about.
• Awesome Music: One thing even his detractors can agree on is that Sher is a kick-ass entrance theme for a Foreign Wrestling Heel.
• Base-Breaking Character: 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 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 The Scrappy 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 Randy Orton (himself a base breaker), as well as Jinder himself routinely showing very tired and cliche heel promos and tactics. Since the end of his push, there are still very few unironic Jinder fans to be heard from with little hope of it changing.
• Creator's Pet:
  • 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 Roman Reigns, 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 Shinsuke Nakamura at SummerSlam 2017, and yet was given a win at the event 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 of SummerSlam he also ruined Baron Corbin cashing in the Money in the Bank briefcase (though John Cena 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 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 fan disgust was very audible. Fortunately, Jinder’s reign with that title was much, much shorter.
• Critical Backlash: 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 job and be a position he was never going to make look convincing no matter what he did, as well as being given more varied matches that didn’t end with a screwjob finish every time. In early 2024, Tony Khan of All Elite Wrestling got in a Twitter controversy after mocking the booking decision for Jinder to have a Heavyweight title match against Seth Rollins despite having a year-long losing streak, where fans, colleagues, and other esteemed industry figures from Booker T to Eric Bischoff came to Jinder's defense, reinforcing that he's a professional who's earned more than continued burials.
• Ethnic Scrappy: Many accused WWE of pushing Jinder only to try and appeal to the Indian market (where the WWE Network had recently launched in 2017, and were stated to go on tour after Backlash). Said push didn't even end up working- it turns out the people of India didn’t care for Jinder at all, they preferred actual proven stars and the tour was reduced to only two shows due to low ticket sales.
• Heartwarming Moments: When Tony Khan took to Twitter complaining about Jinder getting a title shot against Seth Rollins despite having not won a match in a year, fans, co-workers, and 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.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Juicy Jinder. ^Explanation After his return to WWE in 2016, Jinder started looking... a little more vascular than before, with fans attributing this change to his implied use of steroids, even though the Wellness Policy is intact, but Jinder has fallen foul of it before. The fact that he also has gynecomastia (the increase in size of the male breasts), as well as back acne, the two most obvious side effects of anabolic steroid use, makes it harder to deny.
    • BackRash◊
  • Can't Hinder Jinder. ^Explanation A easy play on words that was around since his 3MB days (mostly on an ironic sense), but that gained a lot of traction with both his ironic and non-ironic supporters after his 2017 world title push.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Many detractors consider Jinder to be an inferior Muhammad Hassan, 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 "I hate Americans because they're all racist!".
  • He's also been compared to John "Bradshaw" Layfield, 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 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.
• The Scrappy: Is hated by most of the WWE fanbase to the point where he wasn't even drawing tickets sales in India (which was allegedly the entire reason why he won the WWE Championship).
• Shocking Moments: Jinder Mahal winning the WWE Championship at Backlash. YMMV on whether it was insanity or genius, but it was certainly unexpected.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Aside from losing the WWE Championship on free TV to fan favorite AJ Styles, weeks beforehand Paul Heyman addressed Jinder's challenge to Brock Lesnar with utter disbelief and openly mocked him for even thinking he could stand on even footing to Lesnar, even edging on Worked Shoot and Leaning on the Fourth Wall 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 Samoa Joe and Braun Strowman, and him singing praises to AJ after AJ won the title from Jinder and became Lesnar's new challenger.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: 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 the (in)famous Indian-American politician 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 Seth Rollins, been granted chances to trade barbs with The Rock, and taken up a political persona out of nowhere stating that he's the best man to unite Americans.
• X-Pac Heat: 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. Even after being put in a vastly reduced role and being eventually shunted off television following Triple H's full takeover of WWE creative, his return to TV on 2024's first episode of Raw was met with pure silence from the crowd, who only lit up once he became the punchline to a returning Dwayne Johnson.