Jinder Mahal did not enjoy doing one particular promo during his feud with Shinsuke Nakamura.
During an episode of Smackdown, Jinder Mahal cut a very poor promo on Shinsuke Nakamura. It included such thought provocative insults as calling him constipated, and claiming the Japanese star stole his moves from Michael Jackson.
It that wasn’t the absolute height of comedy, the WWE decide to put some racism into it. Vince McMahon made Jinder Mahal mock Shinsuke Nakamura’s accent. He yelled out “Godzilla!” with an offensive, stereotypical Japanese accent.
However, this is now what the WWE Champion wanted to do at all. Jinder Mahal appeared on Insights with Chris Van Vliet, where he spoke about the order for the promo coming straight from Vince McMahon himself.
“I got the script from the writer. ‘This is from Vince. He wants you to say this.’ I’m like, ‘Ah man. Is there anything else we can do?’ ‘No, it’s coming from Vince.’ I even asked Vince. ‘This is going to get negative backlash.’ ‘No, no, no. Don’t worry. Who cares. It’s not you. It’s a character. Just entertain them.’”
“I did the promo. Was not happy with it. Not proud of myself for doing it. Really wish that I could take that moment back. Unfortunately, I can’t. It got a lot of negative backlash. I remember coming back from Gorilla, and one of the social media managers came up to me and said, ‘Hey, this is getting a lot of bad PR. Vince wants for you to tweet a statement.’ ‘Okay. Cool.’ He came up with something. Maybe the PR team wrote it. He came up with a statement. We were about to tweet it. He said, ‘Actually, Vince changed his mind. He said no.’”
Jinder Mahal: A Promo Like That Will Never Happen Again
Jinder Mahal continued. He added that he was not proud of doing the promo at all. However, it is now a different time with Vince McMahon gone, and he doesn’t think WWE would ever make a talent say those things again.
“It was one of those things where, it is what it is. I’m not proud of doing it. On the plus side, I don’t think a promo like that will ever happen again in WWE. Things changed. The regime changed. Everything is much different now. That was a different era. Different time under Vince. His style was different. Sometimes, he was stuck in his ways.”
