You may look at the list of competitors in tonight’s Six-Pack Challenge and think they all look like pretty unlikely WWE Championship contenders, but our friends at Sportskeeda are reporting that quite possibly the least likely of the bunch is scheduled to walk out of SmackDown Live as the number one contender to Randy Orton‘s title.
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Newly acquired SmackDown star, Jinder Mahal, is expected to defeat Sami Zayn, Dolph Ziggler, Erick Rowan, Luke Harper and Mojo Rawley to get the next shot at Randy Orton. We have to assume the move is being done to give Orton a clear “heel” challenger as the reactions to his championship have been meh at best since his feud with Bray Wyatt fizzled at WrestleMania.
Before Orton can accept the challenge of tonight’s main event, he will have to face former champion, Bray Wyatt, in a House of Horrors match at WWE Payback on April 30th. As of this writing there has been no mention of Wyatt switching back to SmackDown if he recaptures the Championship, which leads us to believe Orton is all but certain to retain.
Jinder Mahal has been impressive in his latest run, but he has been booked as anything but. Outside of being the pawn in Rob Gronkowski and Mojo Rawley’s budding bromance, Mahal has not picked up a single win that has shed the jobber image that followed him during his Three Man Band days with Heath Slater and Drew McIntyre.
Many fans assumed Mahal’s move to SmackDown in the Superstar Shake-Up was a possible punishment for inadvertently giving Finn Balor a concussion. I think we can safely say that was not the case.
I’m all for pushing new stars and Jinder is certainly worthy, but hot shotting a push without the proper build behind it can often backfire.
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