WWE cancels half the India tour due to low ticket sales
 

That Jinder experiment sure paid off.


Speculation on Wrestling Observer board is that ticket prices are way too high for the market + Jinder isn't interesting to Indian fans.

:lol: cancelling a show due to low sales and spinning it as though it is to the fans' benefit

Thai is great news on the face of it.

Hopefully it forces them to fix their shitty product instead of just coasting on money from foreign markets.

????? Did they try booking the Bollywood Boys to wrestle too???????

Seems to me that Indians would care more if Mahal was actually a native Indian, rather than a Canadian dude who happens to speak Punjabi

Needs more Tiger Ali Singh

Saw this on the wrestling observer board:

Seriously though......they gave us Jinder as champion for half a fucking year with the express purpose of drawing a huge crowd in India. And it was a complete waste of time.

I think Jinder vs Cena will still happen at WM tbh
Jinder vs Roman seems like a program tailor-made for next year's RAW after the next roster draft...

I could even see Roman vs Jinder headline SummerSlam

I don't get why WWE thinks they'll make money by touring the turd world. They poo in the streets in India. It's like Mexico but with curry instead of tacos.

They want people to get the network in India apparently....but also apparently not even Netflix can take off in India b/c the public views the cost as 'too much'.

The arena the tour is booked in seats 14,000. So really, they gave you Jinder for six months in hopes of selling out a 14,000 seat arena.

Can still get second row seats to this.

Make the network free in India with tons of fucking ads. (DailyMotion approach)

When half is one show half is bullshit trying to make it sound worse.

Another factor is apparently smog is the worst its ever been. Not even UA are able to fly in.

Kind of amazing how much they bungled recent attempts at trying to expand in the Indian market.

The worst being they made no real effort to build Jinder into a good or decent champ and they dragged their feet on doing this tour until recently. Once Jinder lost the belt, pretty much got rid of a big reason to even have a tour based on the way they were building things.

I don't think that's the case. India is a vast culture that has spread out across the world. There are people who identify as "Indian" that have never been to India. It's just that they aren't fucking dumb and won't simply be pandered to by obtuse nationalism. If the Mahal experiment was working, you'd have seen upward trends in domestic business in the United States and Canada.

Each state and territory in India is widely different from the last. Jinder Mahal is Punjabi Sikh. That's a minority in India. There are extremists who would not consider him Indian even if he were born there because he is not Hindu. Beyond that, for such a large population they actually have a very small sample of sporting and entertainment stars. When it comes to Bollywood, for example, a lot of the heavy lifting is done by very familiar faces and personalities. They are also very attractive, talented, lively and energetic people. Jinder Mahal is...well, he looks very serious and acts very dull.

This was just a bad decision. Jinder Mahal is not a very good professional wrestler. You can't just say "He's Indian" and expect people to suddenly jump into his camp. He was a jobber who showed nothing to indicate he shouldn't be. This was shameless and gross, and they've finally learnt their fucking lesson -- don't be a fucking racist and think that brown people are dumb enough to fall for your shit.

Wouldn't surprise me if India still doesn't sell out, because Triple H isn't a fucking draw either.

So a racist Canadian heel in a turban isn't a huge draw in India? Shocking.

I also have no clue why they organized a tour for the Raw brand with Jinder on it, as opposed to the show with Jinder on it. I don't think it'd make a difference, don't get me wrong, but it's hard to tell if they are even trying.

A lot of people compare Jinder's title run to JBL's and it feels off base. JBL wasn't booked like a complete jobber before his singles run. He was part of a very successful tag team and during his singles stints before JBL he was portrayed as a badass could take the fight to anybody.

It felt jarring when Bradshaw showed up one random SmackDown under a completely new gimmick. In the moment it seemed ridiculous. But it was a billion times more believable than Jinder fucking Mahal suddenly being WWE Champion.

Oh, agreed. JBL was jarring, as was the transformation from Bradshaw to JBL, and it's a perfect example of how far the WWE have gradually fallen piece by piece over the years. This is what I mean when I say that people in the bubble don't see it, and active fans have been conditioned to take this shit and ask for me.

When JBL became champion, ratings and PPV buys tanked. There's no way to spin it -- JBL was a fucking awful champion, despite how much Gertner promos otherwise. The transformation was jarring and weird, and had a noticeable affect on the company. But when you get to Jinder Mahal, they don't even change his gimmick. They just suddenly tell you that he's super-charged and ready to be the best fighter in the world. And nothing really changes. Sure, things continue to tick down, but there is no sudden drop. That's because the damage has already been done. The people left are the people left. The good news is that the WWE probably knows where their bottom is now.

Business was just declining at that time, not really JBLs fault. Most people I know who followed the business at that time really liked his act. The JBL push did seem rushed, but they felt they needed a new top star. Eddie wasn't reliable, and they figured JBL would be a good opponent for him when he was 100%.

False attribution; anecdotal; apologetic; hearsay; stupid.

Back away with ya.

I'd like to see JBL clothesline the fuck out of Jinder Mahal, tbh

I'd like to see Stan Hansen in his prime Lariat the fuck out of Jinder Mahal.

Well yeah, but my thing is possible.

Would be a great way to write Jinder off for a while(/ever?): "You disgraced my legacy as SD Champion!"

Clothesline from Hell, maybe the old cigar bomb through the ring for good measure.

Through the stage into the pits of hell.

Just wait until they move Jinder back to Raw after Mania. Reigns/Jinder sure will put asses in the seats.

It might be the Australian summer, but I'm sure getting wet right now.

I guess the request was, "Please stop." :lol:

JBL's title reign was amazing.

Lock Jaw knows

Yeah, it was good times

Not sure how much money there was to make in India. Maybe if they got the super-rich people to go but those are the types that don't like wrestling.

There was not much money to make in India. And they went the wrong way about it, even if there was.

Tell us about your success in the Indian market.

Call center reps only make so much money.

:rofl:

Hahaha, you don't need a medical degree to know that hitting yourself in the nuts with a hammer is a bad idea. You also don't need to have directed an Oscar-nominated picture to recognize a bad film. You don't need to be able to sing yourself to be bothered by something off-key.

I can tell you how complex the Indian market is from having family and friends who are either Indian, have lived in India, traveled India, or set up businesses that deal with India? I can remind you that Jinder Mahal is Punjabi Sikh and not Hindu like the majority of Indians, and that things aren't always hunky-dory between those two worldviews. I've also been informed that Mahal can barely speak Punjabi. But on a more humane level, I can tell you how fucking appalling it is to insult the intelligence of your fans by assuming them to be fucking stupid just because they are brown.

The WWE took a guy who was a loser and they suddenly flipped the script. That's insulting. It insulted me -- I cancelled my Network subscription. If they can't follow their own stories, why should I? Then they push him as a heel domestically, which is just fucking asinine. They book him to remain at the same credibility level, never being able to pick up a win without assistance, and the whole time the babyfaces fall for the same tricks, making the real heroes of the story look stupid. Who would watch this?

Then they finally announce a tour of India about six months into the reign of a guy you can't trust not to injure himself or others. He gave Finn Balor a concussion the week before he got his push, and, spoiler warning: he's not very good, so he ended up hurting himself during his title reign, hence his reduced schedule at the moment. Not only that, but they announce it for the opposite brand that their "big Indian star" is associated with. This is half-baked at best, and it's likely they didn't even have plans to do this, and there was always some other primary motive behind pushing Mahal, because if this was their attempt to conquer India, then they are out to lunch big time. Anyone can see this, and anyone could have predicted it. You could see it in the domestic drop in attendance and television ratings. In case you didn't know, there are actually a lot of Indian people outside India too. No significant portion of them gave a fuck about Jinder Mahal as WWE Champion, and you could see it.

And most of all, it's offensive that you think that you can get any guy with any amount of talent, and as long as you push them, people will be dumb enough to fall into line. In fact, I'd say it's fucking racist if it weren't for the WWE thinking they can do that with Roman Reigns too. No, you know what -- Roman Reigns has always been protected. It is fucking racist to think that Indian people will eat up any Indian jobber as World Champion.

Also, fuck you, you fucking supplicant.

Besides, I couldn't tell you about my success in the Indian market, because there is no money to be made there. ;)