Every 2017 WWE PPV main event ranked by in-ring value

11. WWE Backlash: WWE Championship Match

Randy Orton (c) vs. Jinder Mahal

After finishing up his feud with Bray Wyatt, a program that was built so wonderfully only to turn out to be complete rubbish, Randy Orton had a new contender for the WWE Championship at WWE Backlash in May and that contender was Jinder Mahal. What a time to be alive, am I right? The “you can’t hinder the Jinder” movement was actually quite strong going into this matchup and having this match in Chicago was probably the way to go as the Windy City crowd was really into this one.

From the start, I was thinking there was no way in hell that they would ever put the belt on a guy like Jinder Mahal. I thought he would give Orton a decent-enough match and then just slide back to the midcard but that obviously is not what happened. As was the case in the Punjabi Prison Match we mentioned earlier, Mahal spent a lot of time working on Orton’s arm, which slowed down the pace following a decent start to the match, and turned out to be rather pointless. The live crowd was so hot and this may not have been the smartest move, but with Jinder’s limited offensive skill set, they really didn’t have a choice.

The Singh Brothers were at ringside and, as they usually did throughout Mahal’s run as WWE Champion, they took some hard bumps on the outside as Orton slammed them through the announce tables. This became the focus of the match, which is what ended up making the arm work meaningless, and Mahal was able to take advantage. Orton brought them back into the ring with the draped DDT spot and Jinder stole the title by hitting The Khallas and got the 1-2-3 to become one of the most unlikely WWE champs in history. This was a decent match and the Chicago crowd certainly made it feel like it was better than it actually might have been.