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Ex-WWE Champion Makes First Shock Appearance After Firing

By John Canton • Published 20th July 2024
WWE logo over blurred The Rock Jinder Mahal

A former WWE Champion made his presence felt at a popular indy wrestling event.

Several notable names were released by WWE this past April. For the second time, Jinder Mahal was released by WWE. While some of the wrestlers released by WWE at the time were not being used that much, Mahal had a memorable segment with The Rock on Raw.

The greatest year of Mahal’s WWE career was in 2017 when he held the WWE Championship on the Smackdown brand for 169 days, which is nearly half a year.

When a WWE superstar is released, they must wait 90 days for their non-compete clause to end before appearing elsewhere. Some of the other WWE stars who are now free agents are Xia Li, Veer Mahaan, Sanga, Cameron Grimes, Xyon Quinn, and Von Wagner.

At the GCW So High event on July 19th in Sauget, Illinois, former WWE Champion Jinder Mahal made his presence felt. Mahal is now using the name Raj Dhesi (his real name).

Dhesi appeared wearing a mask at the GCW event where he attacked Effy. After the attack, Dhesi took the mask off to reveal the familiar face of former WWE Champion Jinder Mahal.

On Twitter/X after the match, Dhesi wrote:

“Game changed, history written.”

As you can see in the clip below, Dhesi hit Effy with The Khallas and then revealed himself under the mask. The fans reacted with a “holy s**t” chant.

Jinder Mahal Didn’t Enjoy The Punjabi Prison Match In WWE

When Mahal was in World Wrestling Entertainment as the WWE Champion, one of his first major title defenses was a Punjabi Prison Match at Battleground 2017 against Randy Orton. Mahal won the match thanks to an assist from The Great Khali.

In a recent interview, Mahal blasted WWE for putting him in a Punjabi Prison Match.

“So first off, the Punjabi prison match sucks. It’s terrible. [In what way?] It’s so hard. The inside cage is the blue old-school cage. You can hit it as hard as possible and it won’t even make a noise. It was terrible.

And then just the crowd reaction, they couldn’t really see the people in the arena, there’s two cages. So when we’re on the inside, there’s two cages they couldn’t really see. And it was just painful. Kendo sticks, chair shots, everything.”

During the same interview, the former Jinder Mahal hit back at the idea that Brock Lesnar refused to work with him while he was World Champion.