Jinder, Unhindered

June 1, 2017 8:50 AM

Last Sunday, Jinder Mahal won the WWE World Championship. This is of note not just because Mahal had never before won any championship in WWE, but mostly because he was considered to be "enhancement talent" (a wrestler who loses to more popular wrestlers) who was only being "pushed" to the top of the card because WWE wants a greater presence in the Indian market. And despite his being booked as a "heel", some say he "isn’t a wrestling villain to western millennials of colour".

Mahal (real name Yuvraj Singh Dhesi) was born in Calgary, Canada, but is ethnically Indian and speaks Hindi and Punjabi in addition to English. His WWE career started with little fanfare, running a short feud with his storyline brother-in-law the Great Khali (the two are, of course, of no relation) and then not gaining much traction until he and two other enhancement-talent guys formed 3MB, an alliance-slash-faux-rock-band that served mainly as comic relief until Mahal was fired in 2014.

Mahal spent the next two years wrestling for independent promotions around the world until his return to WWE in summer 2016. He didn't light up any marquees for the first few months, but a sudden and radical physical transformation (which comes up in virtually every interview) presaged his ascent to the main event. In just two months, Mahal rose from one of 30 guys in a WrestleMania battle royal that served primarily to get Rob Gronkowski into the headlines to a surprise win in a number-one-contendership match. He parlayed that (with some help from the Singh brothers (f/k/a the Bollywood Boys, because in wrestling, the most distinctive thing about most nonwhite wrestlers is their ethnicity)) into an even more shocking win to become the 50th WWE Champion, complete with a suitably awesome "Punjabi Celebration" of his title victory.

Mahal is the first WWE Champion of Indian descent, but there are asterisks all over this "achievement". The title itself is essentially the second-biggest prize in the company nowadays after the Universal Championship, currently held by Brock Lesnar. The two championships are featured on different shows: Lesnar is the Big Bad of Raw, the flagship three-hour Monday night show; while Mahal is the champion of SmackDown, the little-brother two-hour Tuesday night show. This is the same situation his faux-BIL Khali faced when he held the second-tier "World Heavyweight Championship" on SmackDown for two months a decade ago.

But for now, at least, the Modern-Day Maharaja rules the ring, and as David "The Masked Man" Shoemaker sees it, he might be the best "heel" in wrestling today, despite the "Pavlovian" nature of his evil-foreigner shtick.

posted by Etrigan (24 comments total)

Rules? RULES? Are there actually rules? Turns out there are.

The rules mostly concern what conditions must be met for one participant to be declared the winner. What about when one hits the other with a table, I wondered?

This one stands out, if for nothing else the vagueness.

A disqualification is if a wrestler breaks a rule or the ref feels that wrestler is doing what the referee told him not to do over and over again. There are different ways for a pro wrestler to get disqualified:

...Using a foreign object on an opponent, if the match doesn't allow weapons

But what if the ref is looking the other way when it happens? Because referees in all sports are easily distracted. No replay?
posted by Repack Rider at 9:20 AM on June 1, 2017

only being "pushed" to the top of the card because WWE wants a greater presence in the Indian market.

As if that were some terrible sin. I mean, is that not basically the reason Ho Ho Lun got plucked out of obscurity and plonked down into NXT (and the Cruiserweight competition) next to Tian Bing? Because WWE wants to enter the Chinese market as well?

Anyway, being both a pro-wrestling mark and a guy with a Sikh friend who is also a mark, I've been watching Jinder with interest. First of all, he's not getting booed nearly as much as an evil foreign heel should be, despite his astounding permanent sneer, mostly because Randy Orton's recent title run was incredibly boring (much like Orton himself). The crowd at least halfway likes Jinder, even if for no reason other than variety.

Second, the tenor of his promo has basically been "I want to enjoy my victory, but you fans want to boo anyone who looks like me, so fuck you, I'll be a heel. I'm going to celebrate my way and speak Hindi in the ring, so deal with it."

In any case, Living Meme/Captain America action figure JOOOOHN CENAAAAA is returning to Smackdown on the actual Fourth of July, and if he doesn't steamroll Jinder to regain the title and break Ric Flair's record that night, probably bald eagles everywhere will go extinct.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:23 AM on June 1, 2017 [4 favorites]

(Usually) no replay in wrestling. Only the single referee's decision matters. Say what you will about the WWE, they are nothing if not purists.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 9:25 AM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Once in a while, a heel will appeal to the General Manager or similar authority when they have been victimized by a hideously blind ref and be listened to, usually ending up in a reversal or at least a rematch for the same stakes. The faces will speak of miscarriages of justice but generally suck it up and try harder next time.

Or someone like Stone Cold will be the Special Guest Referee and all bets are off.

Or you could be in Dramatic Dream Team in Japan, where a referee's dog can win a title match against a stepladder.
posted by delfin at 10:18 AM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Etrigan's reminder about Jinder being part of 3MB in the past reminds me: After breaking up, he and Drew McIntyre [nee Galloway] worked the indie promotions for a few years before getting re-hired. McIntyre's getting a new push in NXT right now, and the third member, Heath Slater has already gained and lost the Smackdown Tag Team titles with Rhyno.

So if McIntyre wins in NXT, and things turn around for Slater and Rhyno, we could be looking at every member of 3MB holding gold in 2017.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:51 AM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

...and all bets are off.

How naive/stupid can you get? Wrestling results are 100% pre-arranged! Depending on the participants, they may be fully scripted or a lot of improvisation is allowed (there have been big name wrestlers who almost needed a teleprompter), but whatever happens in the ring was determined in a "writers' room". The WWF/WWE is the predecessor of what is jokingly called "Reality TV", which was just Producers' evil and successful plan to stop paying writers at WGA rates.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:00 PM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Shenanigans in pro wrestling? This never would happen if Dusty Rhodes were still alive.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:05 PM on June 1, 2017

Next, you'll be telling me that the Undertaker wasn't really an undead Old West mortician and/or biker.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:15 PM on June 1, 2017 [6 favorites]

How naive/stupid can you get? Wrestling results are 100% pre-arranged!

Ugh, there's one in every wrestling conversation. Yes, people know it's scripted. No, they don't need you to remind them.

Let people have fun.
posted by explosion at 12:23 PM on June 1, 2017 [8 favorites]

What an odd comment, onefellswoop. I have no idea what in delfin's comment made you think they don't know wrestling is fake.

Anyway, I think you're going to see WWE move more and more toward marketing different portions of its roster as the main attraction in different regions, and using more local/independent talent for the undercard in each region. They already have multiple versions of their week-in-review show to air in different countries. Just the raw material of the 6 TV shows they run in the USA each week gives them a lot of different opportunities to slice that content for audiences in different countries.
posted by roll truck roll at 12:23 PM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

How naive/stupid can you get?

No need to get mean, there, oneswellfoop. My reading was that delfin was speaking about the "kayfabe" of pro-wrestling, where weird events, easily distracted refs, and heels dastardly cheating happen all the time, not presenting it as an actual corrupt sporting event.

whatever happens in the ring was determined in a "writers' room".

The people who determine wrestling outcomes are never referred to as "writers" in a "writers' room." By longstanding jargon tradition, they are "bookers" or "agents".

The WWF/WWE is the predecessor of what is jokingly called "Reality TV"

That... is a very broad reading of the definition of "reality TV", since the past two decades of the sort of shows you're talking about rely heavily on creating one hour of narrative by editing down hundreds of hours of footage, and forcing actual people in easily defined caricatures -- the slut, the manipulator, the team player, the cutthroat, etc. Whereas pro-wrestling on TV is often broadcast live (or with minor editing), recorded in front of an audience, with performers who know from the beginning that they're playing characters (often that they helped create).

which was just Producers' evil and successful plan to stop paying writers at WGA rates.

Ha ha ha lol nope. As someone who was in TV production back then, cutting writer's salaries was a drop in the bucket compared to how much reality shows saved on production costs across the board. A whole season of Survivor could be made for the cost of one episode of Friends, or Everybody Loves Raymond (just to pick two high-rated scripted shows from the era of Survivor's debut). Screwing the writers was just an afterthought.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 12:24 PM on June 1, 2017

How naive/stupid can you get?

I don't know, how naive/stupid/willfully disingenuous can you get? The phrase "all bets are off" can easily mean that what the writers' room comes up with will be fairly surprising or unpredictable.

But we probably shouldn't feed the predictable troll who goes on rants about pro wrestling every time it's brought up.
posted by misskaz at 12:26 PM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's interesting how vague concerns about whether a writing decision on a show was made because it was "good for business" only ever comes up when the decision favors a non-white person (vs. when similar decisions are made to favor a white person with particular demographic appeal).

"Interesting".
posted by tocts at 12:41 PM on June 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

Mod note: oneswellfoop, you have made very very clear on a number of occasions that you are aware that wrestling is fake and that you don't like it. Both are okay things to feel but you need to just stop ever bringing it up on MetaFilter at this point, not limited to but very especially including entering discussions about it just to go on about it again.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:41 PM on June 1, 2017 [6 favorites]

So, I really didn't get professional wrestling at all when growing up in the 90s when it was EVERYWHERE. That is, until Canadian comedy troop Loading Ready Run of Desert Bus for Hope fame started a youtube show called Looks Like Some Kind of Sidewalk Slam, where they talk about the narrative construction and storytelling within wrestling. I think I get it now. The reason people isn't watch isn't (just) to watch large, sweaty men and women beat eachother to a pulp. There are long running feuds and over the top gimics and stories and such. It isn't really my thing, but I get why people would watch it.

Or as someone on twitter put it: It is a live action sports anime. Complete with magic, undead and special moves only one family of people know how to do.
posted by Canageek at 1:09 PM on June 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

Anyway, I think you're going to see WWE move more and more toward marketing different portions of its roster as the main attraction in different regions, and using more local/independent talent for the undercard in each region.

This would be an interesting sort of New Territorial Era, with a world champion barnstorming around local promotions every now and then just long enough not to get boring.
posted by Etrigan at 1:31 PM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yep. And I think you're seeing that with the partnerships WWE is starting to make with independent companies. It's always about using the local companies to promote the WWE brand, not the other way around.
posted by roll truck roll at 1:56 PM on June 1, 2017

No one can tell me that a cat would listen to human writers.
posted by delfin at 3:24 PM on June 1, 2017

It is a live action sports anime.

I've always said it's a soap opera, but not one of the boring ones, more like the ones where characters get possessed by the actual devil, where there are people unknowingly married to twins, and so on. Except here, the character roles happen to be filled with world class athletes who are capable of moves that stagger the imagination and defy gravity. It's a staged play with better action (and arguably worse writing), but no one stands up in the middle of Romeo and Juliet to say it's all fake, and Mercutio isn't really dead.

I like mah stories.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:30 PM on June 1, 2017 [4 favorites]

Jesse Ventura once described pro wrestling as "ballet with violence" but opera, or soap opera, might be a better description. And in a kayfabe twist this is vrakatar posting on my sweetie's machine cuz mine is in the shop.
posted by feistycakes at 5:43 PM on June 1, 2017

I like mah stories.

Phoenix Wright with a lot more sweat and spandex.
posted by lkc at 6:18 PM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Wrestling can be a gymnastics meet on Halloween night gone horribly wrong.
Wrestling can be two Japanese men taking turns kicking each other's teeth out.
Wrestling can be a man spitting green mist onto a woman's crotch, resulting in the birth of a 500-pound sumo baby.
Wrestling can be two severely obese men belly-bumping each other.
Wrestling can be severe midget trauma.
Wrestling can be an athletic spectacle.
Wrestling can be Survival Tobita defending humanity against Ken the Box.
Wrestling can be a wolf girl preparing to battle a child.
Wrestling can be a grown man battling a different child.
Wrestling can be a child beating up grown men.
Wrestling can be grown women shedding far too much blood.
Wrestling can be the world's greatest manboobs.
Wrestling can be a man wrestling a blow-up doll for 30 minutes.

Choose your own adventure.
posted by delfin at 6:23 PM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Never forget:

Wrestling can be "the most illegal move in the history of wrestling!"
posted by Ghidorah at 7:06 AM on June 2, 2017

WWF (and WWWF) back in the day always had an "ethnic" champion. Someone of some creed that was there to excite people of his nationality into watching the product. Since they were in the northeast, there were a lot of Italians, and Bruno Sammartino was the wrestler the mantle was put upon. There was also a large hispanic contingent, and Pedro Morales (being Puerto Rican) was the champ for them. Buddy Rogers was the champ for the Germans.

It seems to me that WWE today may be moving back to something that looks like that between the UK champ (which will probably be the first in a line of geographically specific titles), and Jinder as the Heavyweight Champ. Give a group of people someone that looks like them to make them excited in the product. (Great Khali arguably, was the first, very unsuccessful attempt at this same thing)
posted by deezil at 8:19 AM on June 2, 2017 [1 favorite]