Vince McMahon Forced Jinder Mahal To Cut Racist WWE Promo On Shinsuke Nakamura

WWE found themselves being heavily criticised in September 2017 following a racist promo from WWE Champion Jinder Mahal about his on-screen rival Shinsuke Nakamura on an episode of SmackDown. Within the promo in Oakland, California, Mahal mocked Nakamura's voice saying, "You always 'rook' the same" and he also referred to Nakamura as Mr Miyagi, the Japanese mentor of Daniel LaRusso from The Karate Kid. 

The promo immediately received a backlash on social media and even inside the arena, with fans chanting, "That's too far" at Mahal and the Singh Brothers. WWE later issued a statement to the Washington Post about the segment, writing: 

"Just like many other TV shows or movies, WWE creates programming with fictional personalities that cover real-world issues and sensitive subjects. As a producer of such TV shows, WWE Corporate is committed to embracing and celebrating individuals from all backgrounds as demonstrated by the diversity of our employees, performers and fans worldwide."

Jinder Mahal reflected on the promo during an appearance on Insight with Chris Van Vliet and the former WWE Champion revealed he had reservations about the promo but he had little choice but to do it as written as it came directly from Vince McMahon, who was then WWE CEO and head of creative.

"There was one promo in particular. Recently, I actually just saw Shelton Benjamin tweet that if he could take back one thing in his career it was a promo with Yoshi Tatsu. Same thing, kind of like a racial promo. So that day, I had the promo, I got the script from the writer, 'This is from Vince, he wants you to say this.' I was like, Oh man, I don't want to say [this], is there anything else we can do? He said, 'No, it's come from Vince.' So I even asked Vince [and said] 'This is gonna get negative backlash.' He said 'No, no, no, no, don't worry. Who cares? It's not you, it's a character, just entertainment,'" Mahal stated.

"So did the promo, was not happy with it and not proud of myself for doing it. I really wish that I could take that moment back but unfortunately, I can't. Right when we came back it got a lot of negative backlash, like I remember coming back from Gorilla. I was still 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 and Vince wants you to tweet something, like a statement.' I said, 'Okay, cool.' He came up with something, maybe the PR team wrote it, someone came up with a statement. And as we were about to tweet it, he said 'Actually, Vince changed his mind, he said no.'" 

Mahal later noted that he was given the choice of doing the promo or taking his ball and going home. 

"That was the explanation that was given to me, I was like fine we'll do it. I had asked can we do something else? Is there anything else we can do? I was told no, this is what Vince wrote and you can either do it or you take your ball and go home," he added.

Mahal doesn't believe such a promo would happen today in WWE following the regime change, with Mahal stating that McMahon was "stuck in his ways." The company is now owned by TKO Group Holdings, an organisation owned by Endeavor. Vince McMahon is no longer involved with WWE following his resignation as TKO Executive Chairman in the aftermath of the Janel Grant lawsuit. Nick Khan is WWE President, while Triple H is in charge of creative as WWE Chief Content Officer. 

Jinder Mahal, now going by Raj Dhesi, is no longer a part of WWE following his release in April. Dhesi is open to bookings and he believes now could be the time for him to have a babyface run.

H/T Inside The Ropes