4 months ago
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Before the annual Survivor Series Premium Live Event became the home of WarGames, it was the place where WWE wanted to see which brand reigned supreme. The champions from "WWE Raw" and "WWE SmackDown" would face each other in special singles matches, and in 2017, WWE Champion Jinder Mahal was set to do battle with Universal Champion Brock Lesnar ... except that didn't actually happen.
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Instead, Mahal would drop the WWE Championship to AJ Styles on an episode of "SmackDown" in Manchester, England, and Styles went on to face Lesnar at Survivor Series in a match that many considered the best of the entire night. Rumors and reports swirled given that the title switch was so close to Survivor Series, with the common narrative being that Lesnar didn't want to work with Mahal. On "Insight with Chris Van Vliet," Mahal cleared up any and all speculation regarding the situation.
"Obviously there's a lot of misinformation on the internet," Mahal said. "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 going to put heat on who? It was going to 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."
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Please credit "Insight with Chris Van Vliet" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
