A former WWE star has addressed a previous rumour regarding a cancelled match with Brock Lesnar, clarifying that the claims are false.
Prior to WarGames being the focal point of Survivor Series, recent iterations of the event focused on brand warfare with stars from Raw competing against SmackDown stars for brand supremacy. Along with the traditional elimination matches, the respective champions from each brand would face each other on the night.
At Survivor Series 2017, the top men’s match looked set to be Universal Champion Lesnar facing WWE Champion Jinder Mahal. However, just over a week before the show, Mahal lost the title to AJ Styles at a SmackDown taping in Manchester, England, switching up the match on short notice
Following the sudden switch, one rumour that began to circulate was that Lesnar refused to work with Mahal, and called for the match to be changed. However, according to Mahal, this was not the case.
Former WWE Champion Jinder Mahal Clarifies Brock Lesnar Rumour
Speaking with Kenny McIntosh at an Inside The Ropes live event, Mahal noted that a heel vs. heel matchup would not have worked, and questioned how the audience would react to it:
“Brock’s the heel. I’m a heel. I don’t know how we’re going to do this match… Is he going to turn babyface for the night? Are people going to cheer him? I don’t know who’s going to go over. We’re both champions. I don’t know.”
Continuing, the former WWE Champion added that he was a huge fan of the Styles vs. Lesnar match, admitting that it was a lot better than what would have happened if he faced Lesnar at Survivor Series:
“AJ has a really, really good match with with Brock. I loved it… It was an amazing match. It was way better of a match than me and Brock would have had, given the circumstances that were both heels, they had an incredible match, the story of the size difference and everything. It was a fantastic, fantastic match, way better than anything I could have done.”
Mahal then addressed the speculation that Lesnar forced the match to be changed, and how it became a topic of discussion for online fans:
“Fast forward a couple years, that’s when it came out on Twitter… I think it was Dave Meltzer, he said it, Brock refused to work with Jinder,” Mahal stated.
Mahal firmly refuted this narrative based on his own experiences and interactions with Lesnar. “Nobody told me Brock doesn’t want to work you, etc. In fact, Brock showed me nothing but respect, even to the very end of the time that I was in WWE,” Mahal asserted. “If Brock sees me in the locker room, he shows me the utmost respect always, handshake, hug and I don’t see him treat that like I don’t see him that way with everybody… Me and Brock have a certain respect for each other.”
“What I think happened, and I agree with it. It wasn’t like a refusal to work. It was like, ‘hey, this will be a better match. Me and AJ.’ …I’m a heel, he’s a baby face, which I completely agree it was the right call. It was a way better match. But somehow it got spun into Brock refused to work Jinder, which, in my opinion, is not the case.”
He challenged the timeline of the rumor, adding, “Go back and look at any wrestling news, if at that time when I dropped the title, somebody find me something at that time that came out, ‘this is Brock refused to wrestle Jinder.’ It came out like years later… and then that’s been the common commentary amongst the IWC. Brock refused to work Jinder.”
Seeing the funny side of the story, Mahal ended by joking that Lesnar was angry that he was going to lose the match to Mahal:
“But I kind of wanted to spin it and be like, No, he refused to job to me because Jinder was going to go over.”
Mahal now competes on the independents under the name Raj Dhesi. Lesnar made his return to WWE at SummerSlam 2025, and went on to beat John Cena at Wrestlepalooza in what was effectively a glorified squash match.
H/t to Wrestling News.co for the use of transcription.
Featured image: WWE
