Former WWE Champion Brock Lesnar is one of the most dominant champions in the history of the promotion. Lesnar, who has fought former champions like John Cena, Triple H, Big Show, Seth Rollins, AJ Styles, Daniel Bryan, Roman Reigns, and many more, was reported in 2017 to have refused to work with then-WWE Champion Jinder Mahal.
In 2017, Brock Lesnar was the WWE Universal Champion on Raw, and Jinder Mahal was the WWE Champion on SmackDown. At the WWE Survivor Series, known for the brand battle between Raw and SmackDown, a match between them was scheduled. Lesnar was challenged by Jinder Mahal for the match at the Survivor Series.
Initially, WWE promoted the match for the show. However, a few weeks before the Survivor Series, Jinder Mahal faced AJ Styles for the WWE title on an episode of SmackDown. Styles defeated Mahal to become the new WWE Champion and replaced him in the Survivor Series match against Brock Lesnar.
While Styles and Lesnar delivered one of the best matches in WWE history, the question on everyone’s mind remains: why didn’t Lesnar want to work with Jinder Mahal?
Jinder Mahal reveals why his match with Brock Lesnar never took place
Former WWE Champion Jinder Mahal, released earlier this year, recently appeared on the “Insight with Chris Van Vliet” podcast. During the interview, Mahal addressed various topics, including his release and the Punjabi prison match. He was specifically asked about the rumor about Brock Lesnar refusing to work with him.
He stated, “This is just my opinion, and obviously there’s a lot of misinformation on the internet. The headline came out, ‘Brock Lesnar refused to work with Jinder.’ I don’t think he refused. I just think it was he probably pitched for a match with AJ because stylistically, it is 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 [laughs].”
He continued by saying, “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 book the match with AJ Styles. Which is okay, I have to lose a championship at some point anyway, I had it for six months and I didn’t know that I was losing the championship until the day of [the show].”
Mahal also mentioned that it was Vince McMahon who informed him he would be losing the championship to AJ Styles. McMahon told him that AJ Styles would win the title that night and face Brock Lesnar at the Survivor Series.