Shane Helms was a recent guest on The Steve Austin Show, and the two men discussed the Jinder Mahal phenomenon.
Helms talked about his reaction to Mahal's title win at Backlash, saying, “I thought it was pretty well done. I didn’t know which way they were going and that’s what I love about wrestling. I love when I can’t predict who the winner is going to be."
Helms also offered his opinion of Jinder as a person and told a story about putting in a good work for him to the TNA brass when he was under consideration for an Impact contract. "I like Jinder, man. I can tell he’s working hard. I liked him back in the day and actually before he signed with WWE, he came down to TNA for a visit and I tried to talk him. Not that we had a deep discussion, but I went and endorsed him to the higher-ups and I thought that he was a good guy to bring in. But then, the WWE offer came right away and he made probably what was a better decision financially, especially considering now. I thought it was good. I mean, his work is good, but there are definitely things that can be improved upon. But if you watch him, you can see there’s something there. There’s an energy to him. His promos need to get a little bit better. His facials are good, but he goes to that angry face entirely too fast.”
Austin gave his assessment of Jinder as well. “He’s got a great look, a great body," adding that the ‘Maharaja’ nickname "has cool factor written all over it. Plus, if you play that with arrogance, it works for you. But, down the road, I think that it spells money. The kid's got a great look. Like you said, he’s got the great facials. And you know, dude, you’ve got to bring a few things to the table, whether it’s appearance or size, looks, handsome, ugly, are you a flat-out bad ass worker, just unbelievable talker? This kid has bits and pieces of the things (needed to be successful). And all of these things can be graded on a scale of one to 10 on what you’re bringing to the table. But, at first, one of the big things you’ve got to bring, for Vince to get in that big spot ... Size helps. It just does.”
You can listen to the entire podcast at this link.
(h/t to Wrestling Inc for a portion of the transcript)
