Former WWE star Jinder Mahal, also known as Raj Dhesi, opened up about how winning the WWE Championship completely changed his life.
Speaking on an interview with Click And Tell, Mahal spoke about the pressure and responsibility that came with being the WWE champion. “The thing with becoming WWE Champion or World Champion, your life is never the same. You’re defined as WWE Champion or World Champion forever. At least in the world of wrestling, in the zeitgeist of WWE.”
“The pressure’s very real. The next morning it kicked in, like, ‘Oh my god.’ Because that day I had to wrestle, and the next day, and the next day. And now you’re in the main events and you’re faced with a lot of criticism when you’re in a top spot, you can’t let that get to you.”
He admitted that while it was tough, he was ready for it. “You have to main event pay-per-views, do media, interviews all the time, now you’re traveling with the title, representing – you’re basically the face of the brand. So it’s a lot of pressure, but I was ready for that moment. I was committed. That’s why after I won the title, there was no celebration. I needed to sleep. I can’t change anything.”
Jinder Mahal reveals the hardest part of being WWE champion
Former WWE star Jinder Mahal also talked about how difficult it is to stay focused when you’re successful. “Whatever got me to this spot, in the last 10 months that I’d been doing, if anything I’ve gotta even push further and do even more. Really focus on the things that I had been neglecting or kinda been lazy to do. Things become a routine, and when it’s a routine, it’s a habit – you don’t have to think about it. I just had to stay focused.”
“The hardest thing is staying focused, keeping the distractions… because of course everybody’s your friend, everybody wants to hang out, everybody wants to do this, you’re invited to this and that, but you’ve gotta narrow it down and look at things in a way of, ‘Is this thing gonna help me, or is this thing gonna hurt me? Is this thing gonna get me to my goal, or take me away from my goal?’ So I think that’s the hard part.” [H/T: Wrestletalk]
Jinder Mahal made history by defeating Randy Orton at Backlash 2017 to win the WWE Championship. During his reign, Mahal defended the championship against top stars like Orton and Shinsuke Nakamura.
He even defeated Baron Corbin when Corbin failed to cash in his Money in the Bank contract. After his WWE release last year, Mahal began competing on the independent circuit, performing across the US, Canada, Asia, Europe, the UK, and Australia.
Read More: Jinder Mahal Reveals What It Would Take For Him To Return To WWE
