Jinder Mahal has been the WWE Championship since May 21, 2017 when he beat Randy Orton to win the coveted championship at Backlash. Prior to that night, Mahal was seen as a lower card wrestler that wasn’t featured on WWE pay-per-views regularly and lost nearly all of his WWE television matches from when he started on the main roster in 2011.
Mahal was released in 2014, re-hired in 2016 and got his massive push this year in part because of his improved physique as well as WWE’s desire to grow their fanbase in India, which has 1.3 billion people … as Mahal reminds us in nearly every promo.
In an interesting bit of wrestling statistics and trivia, Mahal recently passed a huge name in terms of number of days as WWE Champion, Ric Flair. As of today, Mahal is at 119 days as WWE Champion. Flair’s two reigns as WWE Champion were 118 days with the 77 day reign from Royal Rumble 1992 and another 41 days as WWE Champion in September 1992.
Jinder > Flair? Not really, but it is an interesting stat. Of course, Flair’s other 14 World Championship reigns were from when he worked for the NWA/WCW, so let’s not get crazy here with the comparisons. Shoutout to Reddit for the info.
Another name that Jinder passed for days as WWE Champion is Roman Reigns, who also sits at 118 days as WWE Champion. Reigns has had three official WWE Championship runs, and since Reigns is on Raw (which doesn’t have the WWE title) right now, it may be a long time until he can ever pass Jinder. Who would have thought that?
Mahal’s WWE Championship reign has drawn mixed reviews with some fans applauding him for raising his game to the championship level by beating the likes of Orton and Shinsuke Nakamura in high profile PPV bouts. Others, like myself, will point out that his matches are just average, his promos are often boring and the formula for his victories (Singh Brothers get beat up leading to a Jinder win) are repetitive. Fans want to see new people getting a chance, but the way WWE is booking this champ makes us wonder if it’s best for business.
The next major WWE Title defense for Mahal is at WWE Hell in a Cell on October 8 when he defends the gold against Shinsuke Nakamura. It has not been announced as a Hell in a Cell match.
If you’re wondering, the longest combined days as WWE Champion belongs to Bruno Sammartino with 4,040 days. That’s over 11 years, so that record is safe.
