WWE: 4 Booking Steps to Make Jinder Mahal a Credible Title Challenger

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Jinder Mahal becoming the No. 1 Contender to the WWE Championship has been one of the biggest surprises in recent months. So how can WWE build Mahal up into a believable challenger?

Jinder Mahal is the new No. 1 Contender for the WWE Championship. For many people, seeing Mahal challenge Randy Orton for SmackDown’s biggest prize seems like a bizarre direction. After all, Mahal doesn’t have any real credibility as a challenger at this time.

The last time Mahal was featured prominently in any way was when he was part of 3MB, and that was years ago. After that trio split up, Mahal hasn’t done anything of note on either brand. He did start a sort of ‘I come in peace’ gimmick, but that shtick has since ended, for obvious reasons.

The reason WWE are building Mahal up as a new WWE World title challenger is because the company’s expanding into India in a major way. To build up potential sales in that country, WWE needs a top wrestler of Indian descent to appeal to that country. Moreover, with Rusev sidelined with an injury, they need someone else to fill the role of ‘evil foreigner’, which is still a necessary role in WWE, for some reason.

So far, Mahal has done little to prove that he’s a credible challenger for the WWE Championship. While he has attacked Randy Orton on the most recent episode of SmackDown, that isn’t enough to build Mahal up. Any wrestler can attack a bigger star than them when they have the numbers advantage. That doesn’t help build that wrestler up as a credible threat to the challenger.

There are three weeks until Backlash, when Mahal will be challenging for the WWE Championship. WWE need to as much as possible to build Mahal up as a credible challenger, so here are four things they need to do.