SmackDown Live’s Backlash pay-per-view this past Sunday night brought the dawn of a new age for WWE. Jinder Mahal — yes, the same wonderful juicer jobber that literally knocked out Finn Balor a few weeks back — is now WWE Champion. All hail the Maharaja in this week’s post-Backlash edition of the WWE Superstar Power Rankings.
For the second year in a row now, the SmackDown Live-specific pay-per-view brought us a title change revolving around the WWE Championship.
Jinder Mahal, the same man that was pounced by New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski at WrestleMania 33 in the Andre the Giant Battle Royal, is now your WWE Champion. I’m not making this up. The Maharaja is holding the same championship as John Cena, Triple H, Randy Orton, Batista, Hulk Hogan, The Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, The Miz and many other greats of the wrestling business.
Mahal’s lightning-quick rise to the top of the blue brand brought some of the most incredible reactions from fans this past Sunday night in Chicago (technically it’s Rosemont, but Chicago sounds so much better). I captured most of them here and they’re fantastic meme material for your next few tweets.
Also at Backlash, Kevin Owens defended the United States Championship against No. 1 contender AJ Styles and won via count-out in a rather strange way with Styles’ foot being caught in the monitor cables at a ringside announce table, allowing Owens to keep his title. It felt very Kevin Owens-ish, which ruled, especially after the New Face of America superkicked a tied-up Styles in the back of the noggin.
Now that we’ve hit two of the bigger portions of this week’s rankings, why don’t we just into this week’s post-Backlash WWE Superstar Power Rankings?
(Disclaimer: The wrestlers chosen for this power rankings list only appear on Monday Night Raw or SmackDown Live, so that means no NXT/205Live specific stars are on this list.)