Jinder Mahal Reveals Vince McMahon Threatened to Fire Him Weeks Before His WWE Title Win

Jinder Mahal has offered a candid look at the razor-thin margin between obscurity and WWE Championship glory, revealing that a backstage confrontation with Vince McMahon nearly derailed everything before it ever began.

Appearing on TMZ Inside The Ring, Mahal addressed the persistent narrative that his 2017 WWE title reign was handed to him purely as a business move to tap into the Indian market. He pushed back firmly on that characterization.

“I know there’s a common theme that I was given the WWE Championship for India, but that India market was there when I got released, it was there when I was in 3MB, it’s still there to this day,” Mahal said.

His argument is that the real catalyst was personal reinvention — a transformation in his physique, his promos, his mindset, and even the way he presented himself on screen. “I had to become the champion before I became the champion,” he said, noting that he invested in custom-made suits each week as part of building his character.

But the most striking revelation centered on an incident involving Finn Balor during a Raw match, in which Mahal accidentally concussed his opponent with a mistimed forearm off the ropes. The fallout was immediate and severe.

“Wrestling is a game of millimeters. If you’re a millimeter off, you could end your career, you could have a broken neck,” Mahal said. When he arrived backstage, McMahon confronted him directly. “Vince told me himself, like, ‘I should fire you.'” Mahal said he even told Road Dogg he was prepared to accept whatever punishment came his way.

What makes the story remarkable is the timing. Within a week of that backstage dressing-down, Mahal was drafted to SmackDown. A week after that, he became the number one contender. Within a month, he was WWE Champion.

“Everything could have ended,” Mahal said, reflecting on how a single mistimed strike almost rewrote the entire chapter of his career. Instead, it became the backdrop to one of the more surprising title reigns in recent WWE history — and a story Mahal clearly feels has never been told fairly.