Jinder Mahal reflects on promo against Shinsuke Nakamura.
On the September 12, 2017 episode of WWE SmackDown, WWE Champion Jinder Mahal mocked Shinsuke Nakamura in a promo that had racial overtones.
Speaking to Chris Van Vliet on Insight, Mahal looked back on the promo and express his regret.
"There was one promo in particular. That day, I had the promo, I got the script from the writer. 'This is from Vince. He wants you to say this.' I'm like, 'Ah man. Is there anything else we can do?' 'No, it's coming from Vince.' I even asked Vince. 'This is going to get negative backlash.' 'No, no, no. Don't worry. Who cares. It's not you. It's a character. Just entertain them.' I did the promo. Was not happy with it. Not proud of myself for doing it. Really wish that I could take that moment back. Unfortunately, I can't. Right when we came back, it got a lot of negative backlash. I remember coming back from Gorilla. I was hanging out by Gorilla and one of the social media managers came up to me and said, 'Hey, this is getting a lot of bad PR. Vince wants for you to tweet a statement.' 'Okay. Cool.' He came up with something. Maybe the PR team wrote it. He came up with a statement, and as we were about to tweet it, he said, 'Actually, Vince changed his mind. He said no.' It was one of those things where, it is what it is. I'm not proud of doing it. On the plus side, I don't think a promo like that will ever happen again in WWE. Things changed. The regime changed. Everything is much different now. That was a different era. Different time under Vince. His style was different. Sometimes, he was stuck in his ways," said Mahal.
Mahal and Nakamura feuded throughout the summer over the WWE Championship, with Mahal always retaining.
Elsewhere during the interview, Mahal commented on his WWE release. You can find his full comments by clicking here.
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