5 Ways Jinder Mahal Was Actually A Good WWE Champion (& 5 Ways He Was Awful)

In May of 2017, at Backlash, the unthinkable happened: Jinder Mahal -- former 3MB jobber turned “Modern Day Maharaja” -- defeated nine-time champion Randy Orton for the WWE Championship. Ultimately, Mahal would hold the title for 170 days, scoring successful defenses against not only Orton but also Shinsuke Nakamura and Baron Corbin before dropping the title to AJ Styles.

It was a weird time, for sure, but was Jinder Mahal’s run with the WWE Championship actually good? Let’s not hinder Jinder and actually evaluate his reign, focusing on the great things about it as well as the reasons why it totally sucked.

10 Good: Something New

The best thing one can say about the Jinder Mahal WWE Championship run is that it was something new. Mahal has the distinction of being the first WWE champion of Indian descent, which is extremely cool, but what was especially exciting about his title win is that he was one of the least likely candidates to enter the main event title scene.

Previous champions were Randy Orton, Bray Wyatt, John Cena, and the former Shield guys. It’s rare to see a guy from the undercard get a shot like that, and it felt refreshing.

9 Awful: Feuding with Randy Orton

Great Khali interferes in the Punjabi Prison match

Jinder Mahal’s reign wasn’t off to a strong start, given that it began with a feud with babyface Randy Orton, coming “hot” off the heels of the reviled House of Horrors match.

The feud continuing after Mahal won the title wasn’t much better, given that they clashed in the extremely gimmicky Punjabi Prison match at Battleground, which Mahal won with not only the help of his goons the Singh Brothers but also via interference from The Great Khali, randomly showing up in the company for a one-off appearance. None of this boded well for the run.

8 Good: Classic Heel

The thing about Jinder Mahal was that fans didn’t want to see him as WWE Champion. It’s a classic heel wrestler thing -- someone fans don’t like holding the title so that they clamor for a babyface to unseat the champ.

It’s an extremely old school approach that can backfire today as fans are much savvier about the wrestling business than they were in the territory days, but Mahal filled that role to the best of his abilities.

7 Awful: Outdated Gimmick

That said, Jinder Mahal’s gimmick may have been a little too old school, given that he was a traditional foreign heel in the vein of ‘70s and ‘80s classics like The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff.

As prejudiced, racially and/or culturally insensitive, and lowest-common-denominator as they are, those gimmicks worked back in the day because of global politics. American wrestling fans didn’t have those feelings about India, and most of Jinder Mahal’s heel gimmick was boasting about India’s high population.

6 Good: Never a Transitional Champion

It may be tempting to label Jinder Mahal as a transitional champion, but that term doesn’t really apply here. Transitional champions, which have their uses, tend to hold titles for incredibly short amounts of time, from as short as a single day to a couple of weeks or so.

Jinder Mahal was WWE Champion for 170 days, and seemingly only lost the title because Survivor Series was coming up and they needed a bigger name to represent SmackDown in the requisite Champion vs. Champion match. If it weren’t for that, Jinder Mahal might still be WWE Champion today. But probably not.

5 Awful: It Lasted Half a Year

The thing about 170 days is that it’s almost half a year, and that’s a long time to run the Jinder Mahal experiment. It’s reminiscent of that time that Diesel was WWF Champion for an entire year, but even in that controversial example fans were enthusiastic about Diesel for part of the run.

With Mahal, the decision to keep the belt on him at the expense of more must-see stars like Shinsuke Nakamura was baffling.

4 Good: Memorable

As much as the run may not have entirely worked, it’s hard to deny that Jinder Mahal as WWE Champion was a memorable one. It may be because Mahal was such a left-field choice, but that’s still more memorable than, say, Sheamus’ WWE Championship run, which only existed to help Roman Reigns get over.

On the contrary, does anyone remember that Jinder Mahal held the WWE United States Title for about a week in 2018 before losing it to Jeff Hardy? Now that’s a transitional champion.

3 Awful: No Good Matches

The value of Jinder Mahal being WWE Champion was just the simple fact that Jinder Mahal was WWE Champion. Disappointingly, it had nothing to do with in-ring product, as much as some fans hoped that the run would secretly expose Mahal as some kind of super worker who was simply not given a chance to shine.

It’s possible that, as a heel “keepaway” champ, he still wasn’t given a chance to shine. But as it happened, the only reaction fans had to the in-ring portion of his run was frustration that Jinder Mahal could beat Shinsuke Nakamura, even with interference.

2 Good: Lost It At The Right Time

One of the best things about the Jinder Mahal experiment is that it ended just when it needed to -- in time for the Survivor Series match against Universal Champion Brock Lesnar.

They quickly had AJ Styles beat Mahal for the WWE Title so they could have a big-name match, and the result was totally worth it, as the Styles/Lesnar match ruled. Jinder Mahal is therefore a good WWE Champion because his loss of the title resulted in an unexpected dream match.

1 Awful: Not Good Enough to Lose to Brock Lesnar

It’s kind of funny that Jinder Mahal -- along with the rest of 3MB -- was deemed worthy to be slaughtered by Brock Lesnar on a 2013 of Monday Night Raw, but Mahal as WWE Champion was not considered worthy to be slaughtered by Brock Lesnar on a pay-per-view four years later.

One supposes that more people would watch a PPV if they think someone actually has a chance of winning, and Mahal/Lesnar is sadly nobody’s dream match.

NEXT: The 5 Best Things AJ Styles Does In WWE (& 5 Things Everyone Forgets He Nailed In TNA)