The truth behind Brock Lesnar supposedly “refusing” to work a WWE match with Jinder Mahal back in 2017 has seemingly been revealed.
Mahal and Lesnar were originally announced to be facing each other at WWE Survivor Series in November 2017.
In the run up to the match, Mahal held the WWE Championship on SmackDown, with Lesnar being Raw’s WWE Universal Champion, so with the stipulation of Survivor Series being the champions of SmackDown and Raw facing each other, that was the match as things stood.
However, shortly before Survivor Series, Mahal dropped the WWE Championship to AJ Styles, so the champion vs champion match became Styles vs Lesnar instead.
Speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, the now-Raj Dhesi revealed his belief regarding the reason the match didn’t happen, saying:
“This is just my opinion, there’s a lot of misinformation on the internet, and the headline came out, ‘Brock Lesnar refused to work with Jinder’. I don’t think he ‘refused’, I just think it was… he pitched for a match with AJ because stylistically, it’s a much better match.
“Me and Brock are both heels, who’s gonna put heat on who? It was gonna be a flat match. It would have just been him suplexing me a bunch of times, maybe Singh Bros get involved. But the match he had with AJ was phenomenal, no pun intended.
“So yeah, I don’t think it was that he ‘refused’ to work with me, I just think Brock has some pull and him and Paul Heyman probably said, ‘Hey, we should talk to Vince’, and said, ‘Hey, put the match with AJ Styles’. Which is okay. I have to lose the championship at some point anyway. I had it for six months. I didn’t know I was losing the championship until the day.“
Dhesi reflected on the conversation he had about dropping the WWE Championship, revealing:
“We were in Manchester and we had the title match, we get to the building, Michael Hayes tells me and AJ go talk to Vince, sends us to Vince’s office, Vince tells us, to me, ‘You’re dropping the championship, now you’re gonna chase it, AJ, you’re winning it tonight, you’ll work with Brock at Survivor Series’, then me and AJ at Night of Champions, one more championship match.
“And that was it. I found out the same day I was winning it, lost it the same way, found out the same day.”
You can see the full AJ Styles vs Brock Lesnar match below this news story.
Jinder Mahal was released by WWE on April 19, 2024 and is returning to the independent scene as Raj Dhesi.
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