Ahead of the scheduled tour of India, Triple H did an interview for IANS (India Independent News) where he stated that the WWE lacked a real pathway for those who wanted to be stars who are from India.
“The WWE hasn’t presented the right pathways. If you were an athlete in India and you watch WWE and thought you really wanna do this, the pathway wasn’t clear. How would you become WWE superstar nobody really knew. So we are doing some work and, by the end of the year, we will have 11 Indian talents … under training to be the next generation WWE superstar — and it is the most we ever had. And you will see it increase even further over the next few years.”
Triple H mentioned that Great Khali and Jinder Mahal were the only stars from India that truly made it, despite the fact that Mahal is from Canada and I guess the Singh brothers don’t count.
Hunter also specifically mentioned Mahal’s “reinventing” himself. “Jinder Mahal has done an amazing job in re-creating himself. Jinder was in WWE for the first time and wasn’t as successful as he would have wanted. But we went back and re-energized himself, dug deeper (within) himself and worked extremely hard in his second chance and is now making the most of it. People can criticise him, but he has earned my respect.”
Take that statement for what it is.