What’s the story?
Clearly, Jinder Mahal is a pretty gracious guy. Not only is he affording Randy Orton a second successive WWE Championship rematch, but he’s also giving the challenger a sneak peak of the stipulation that their next match will be contested under.
During Tuesday’s showing of SmackDown Live, Mahal broke the news that he’d be bringing the Punjabi Prison to next week’s show to give Orton a taste of what he’s in for.
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It’s been almost a decade since we last saw a Punjabi Prison match in WWE and in total we’ve only ever seen two such matches booked by the company. But on July 23 at the SmackDown-exclusive Battleground show, we’ll be seeing the structure return to action when Mahal defends his WWE Championship against Orton.
Also read: Best and Worst of SmackDown Live — July 11, 2017
The finer points
From the company’s perspective, it seems like Mahal’s announcement on SmackDown acted as something of a double whammy. Not only does it promote next week’s go-home show, but it also provided a major talking point that helped mask the fact that Orton wasn’t even in attendance this past week. He was off filming in Thailand for the movie “Changeland”, but thankfully he’s slated to be back in time for next week.
What’s next?
Obviously, the most immediate next step will be taken at next week’s SmackDown show, when the Prison makes it return to WWE programming. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out, partly because the company won’t want to give too much away ahead of Battleground, and partly because there isn’t a great deal, you can do with a Punjabi Prison—other that having an actual match in it.
Realistically, we’ll probably see another Mahal promo, followed by him somehow luring Orton into the cage, where he’ll inevitably be jumped by the Singh brothers. Not that they’ll be able to do that come Battleground, of course.
Author’s take
Given the rather unglamorous history of Punjabi Prison matches, this one’s been something of a hard sell for WWE. And while hyping up the structure’s return on next week’s SmackDown certainly adds intrigue to that particular show, it may not necessarily do any favours for Battleground itself. It’s been such a long time since we last saw the Prison that they might have been better off holding out until the pay-per-view to give us our first glimpse of the structure’s return.
If nothing else, it at least provides us with a double dose of the Punjabi Prison—though it’s debatable as to whether or not that’s a good thing.
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