Jinder Mahal opens up about his WWE release.
In April, Jinder Mahal announced that he and WWE had parted ways. Mahal was released along with Indus Sher (Veer & Sanga). Mahal's second run in WWE began in 2016.
Speaking to Chris Van Vliet on Insight, Mahal commented on his WWE release.
"There is no hositilty or negative feelings with WWE. Very grateful for them with all the years and the platform they provided me. It's amazing," he said. "During WrestleMania week, myself and Indus Sher talked to [talent relations]. They were wanting to go back to India. A few months prior, Veer had a religious event that he holds. It was the one year anniversary of his father's death. He got told we were needed for Raw and he couldn't go back home. Sanga is also from India, he wants to go back home. They were told no, we were needed on Raw. Sure enough, that week we weren't booked. We were sitting at home. They were quite frustrated. Also, myself. Started off the year with The Rock, had the WWE Championship match. One week later, I'm not in the Royal Rumble, which I thought was very weird. We talked to TR and said, 'Listen, if there's nothing for us, we can go our separate ways.' Sure enough, a few months later, we went our seperate ways. We didn't ask (for our releases). It was just, 'Hey, if there are no plans, we can discuss going our seperate ways.'"
Jinder continued, "My contract, I signed for five years in April 2019. They added on 18 months for injury time. That was remaining on my contract. When I signed for the five years, I told myself, 'After five years, I have to go do something else now.' I had my mind made up that in 2024, I was going to, at least temporarily go away from WWE."
Mahal is a officially a free agent as his 90-day non-compete clause has expired.
He is set to face Dominic Garrini at BLP Old Habits Die Screaming on July 27.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit and link to the original source with a h/t and link back to Fightful for the transcription.
![](https://d2skm2yxg2x91b.cloudfront.net/fightful-frontend-prod/2024.01.23.19.20.42/static/images/article/select-quote.png)