A few years ago WWE was putting the top stars from Raw against the top stars from SmackDown at Survivor Series. The two brands would compete during the event which would often feature champion vs. champion matches. Ahead of the 2017 edition of the event Brock Lesnar was the Universal Champion and Jinder Mahal was the WWE Champion. However, a few weeks before the show Jinder Mahal ended up dropping the WWE Championship to AJ Styles which set up Styles vs. Lesnar at Survivor Series.
Over the years it’s been rumored that the title change was done because Brock Lesnar refused to work with Jinder Mahal, but Jinder recently addressed the rumors during an episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, and he explained why he thinks WWE changed course.
“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.
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.
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, and send us to Vince’s office. Vince tells us you’re dropping the championship, now you’re going to 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. Yeah, I found out on the same day I’m winning it, lost it the same way found out the same day.”
H/T Inside The Ropes
