Universal Champion Brock Lesnar vs. WWE Champion Jinder Mahal was the originally announced main event of Survivor Series 2017.
However, Jinder lost the WWE Title to AJ Styles before this PPV, which led to Lesnar facing Styles at Survivor Series in a RAW vs. SmackDown match.
After this happened, rumors surfaced that Lesnar refused to work with Mahal.
Mahal was asked about these rumors on Insight With Chris Van Vliet. Here’s what The Modern Day Maharaja said:
“There’s a lot of misinformation on the internet. The headline came out, ‘Brock Lesnar refused to work with Jinder’. I don’t think he refused.
I just think it was he pitched for a match with AJ because stylistically, it is a much better match. Me and Brock are both heels. Who’s gonna put heat on who? It was gonna 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 (laughs).
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 book the match with AJ Styles’. Which is okay, I have to lose a championship at some point anyway, I had it for 6 months and I didn’t know that I was losing the championship until the day of (the show).
We were in Manchester and we had the title match. We get to the building, Michael Hayes tells me and AJ go talk to Vince, and sent us to Vince’s office. Vince tells me you’re dropping the championship, now you’re going to chase it. AJ, you’re winning it tonight, you’ll work with Brock at Survivor Series, then me and AJ at Clash of Champions, one more championship match. And that was it.
Yeah, I found out on the same day I’m winning it, lost it the same way, found out the same day.”
Jinder Mahal held the WWE Championship for 170 days.
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