Jinder Mahal Retains WWE Title Over Shinsuke Nakamura at SummerSlam

Jinder Mahal was favored to retain the WWE Championship at SummerSlam, but how easily he dispatched the “King of Strong Style” on Sunday came across a bit shocking.

The bout opened with a fantastic video package hyping up the match; one of the best WWE produced video packages in many months. Now that’s saying something given nearly every single one of these things that they make is fantastic. Additionally, Nakamura got a custom entrance that really made this match feel like a big deal. It was the same violinist who played him to the ring at NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn last year.

The bout itself was very slow and plodding. It was unlike your typical high energy Nakamura match in that way. The fans were also a bit more subdued than you would think given what was on the line here.

Mahal didn’t get a lot of offense in and Shinsuke spent much of the time working methodically. In paritcular, Nakamura used submission holds on his opponent like you see below.

The shorter than expected match came to a finish seemingly out of nowhere. Nakamura had hit a Kinshasa on Mahal and was ready to hit another. The Singh brothers then got involved, jumping up to the apron to distract Nakamura. Shinsuke took them both out but then turned around into a Khallas cobra clutch slam for the pinfall.

As Mahal celebrated, they cut to the fans in the crowd who were absolutely shocked that the match came to end this abruptly. I can’t blame them. It was definitely a short match and overall very weak by WWE PPV standards.

It will be interesting to watch SmackDown this week to see how Nakamura is portrayed and protected after being very easily defeated by Mahal on the second biggest show of the year.