Raj Dhesi Pitches Heel Turn And Heyman Pairing For Oba Femi

Raj Dhesi, the former WWE Champion known to fans as Jinder Mahal, thinks WWE is sitting on an opportunity to elevate Oba Femi into a true main-event force — by turning him heel and putting Paul Heyman in his corner.

Dhesi shared the idea on Instagram, suggesting WWE let Femi dominate as a villain rather than continue presenting him as a conventional babyface. His reasoning draws directly from the Brock Lesnar blueprint: let the character destroy everyone in his path and allow the audience to organically decide they’re rooting for him, rather than telling them to.

“Turn Oba Femi heel. Just like Brock Lesnar when he was when he debuted, have him destroy everybody and let the crowd naturally turn him babyface,” Dhesi said. “Put him with Paul Heyman.”

The comparison lands with extra weight given how Femi and Lesnar’s rivalry just concluded. Femi beat Lesnar inside Hell in a Cell in the main event of SummerSlam Night One on August 1, and Lesnar responded by raising Femi’s hand and telling the crowd that Femi was the future while he was now the past. Lesnar confirmed his retirement in the days that followed, and WWE has since shifted him to the alumni section of its website.

Dhesi’s pitch would essentially hand Femi the same tone Lesnar carried into his own WWE debut back in March 2002, when Heyman immediately began speaking for him and WWE made no attempt to frame him as a hero. Lesnar simply steamrolled the roster, won King of the Ring, and captured the WWE Championship within months — with the fans coming around to him on their own timeline. Pairing Femi with Heyman now wouldn’t be a huge leap, either, since Heyman was already woven into the SummerSlam build, appearing in the storyline on the July 6 episode of Raw.

Dhesi has some perspective on Femi beyond pure booking theory. The two overlapped at the WWE Performance Center, and Dhesi admitted on Busted Open back in June that he didn’t initially peg Femi as a future standout watching him train in NXT — a read he says has completely flipped as he’s watched Femi’s rise.

That rise has been rapid. Femi signed with WWE in 2022, won both the NXT Championship and NXT North American Championship, and moved to the main roster earlier this year. His feud with Lesnar dates back to a WrestleMania 42 win on April 19, after which Lesnar appeared to walk away for good — only to return on the May 18 Raw and attack Femi, setting up a Clash in Italy rematch that Lesnar won on May 31. Femi bounced back by running through King of the Ring, beating Jey Uso in the final at Night of Champions to lock up a guaranteed World Championship match, then shockingly gave that opportunity up on the June 29 Raw to instead demand one more shot at Lesnar — on Lesnar’s terms, inside Hell in a Cell in Minnesota.

WWE is currently still positioning Femi as a babyface, and Dhesi isn’t the only veteran weighing in on where he goes from here — Sean Waltman recently called him a “monster,” while Eric Bischoff praised his upside but cautioned against having a man his size wrestle like a smaller athlete. Dhesi has also floated heel-turn ideas for other top stars recently, including Cody Rhodes.

With Lesnar’s in-ring run seemingly over, WWE has a clear runway to define exactly what kind of star Femi becomes next — and Dhesi’s pitch offers one compelling direction.