WWE Rumors: Brock Lesnar And Jinder Mahal To Lock Horns At 2017 Survivor Series

Dave Meltzer reported in today’s daily update that current plans for the WWE call for Raw‘s world champion to face SmackDown’s world champion in a non-title match at the 2017 Survivor Series, which, of course, will be a dual-branded pay-per-view event.

The match would be Brock Lesnar vs. Jinder Mahal, with neither the Universal nor WWE Championship on the line. What the rest of the card for Survivor Series looks like should be finalized in the next few weeks as both brands will begin building towards the show.

Lesnar headlined last year’s Survivor Series as well. There, he lost to Goldberg in just over a minute, with their feud continuing all the way to WrestleMania, where Lesnar defeated Goldberg for the WWE Universal title, which he currently holds. The rest of the Survivor Series card last year was built around Raw vs. SmackDown matches.

As noted earlier today, it appears that Mahal may still be champion when WWE tours India in December as he’s scheduled to defend his title against Kevin Owens at those two shows on December 8 and December 9. It is hard to imagine that WWE’s first champion of Indian heritage wouldn’t hold on to the belt for the tour.

Survivor Series will take place at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas, on November 19. The arena will also play host to NXT TakeOver: War Games the night before that and both Raw and SmackDown in the days after the pay-per-view.

Jinder Mahal is coming off of back-to-back successful pay-per-view title defenses against Shinsuke Nakamura but has been a bit underwhelming as Smackdown‘s title bearer. Brock Lesnar, meanwhile, is looking for fresh challenges after vanquishing the supposedly unstoppable Braun Strowman at the No Mercy pay-per-view.

This is a huge potential match, with the world champion from each brand facing off at one of the year’s “Big Four” pay-per-view events. It will be interesting to see how the story is booked over the next month in order to get these two from opposing brands in a spot to where they would want to wrestle each other.

There is no reason to believe Brock Lesnar won’t hold the WWE Universal Championship for the long-term. Had WWE wanted to make a switch, one would have thought Braun Strowman would have been the guy to win the title at No Mercy. Instead, WWE seems intent on Roman Reigns slowly picking up momentum until WrestleMania, and ultimately taking on Lesnar once again at the big show for the championship.

Brock Lesnar vs. Jinder Mahal Reportedly Being Planned For Survivor Series Next Month https://t.co/vAgCW6gZJM pic.twitter.com/9cf2gdWJmH

— Still Real To Us (@stillreal2us) October 14, 2017

A Mahal versus Lesnar match is interesting from an in-ring perspective because of the fact that it’s just as easy to imagine it being a letdown as it is to imagine it turning out to be a classic. While Mahal has improved greatly as a performer over the last year, he was never a world-beater in the ring. On the other side, Lesnar is a world-class wrestler but has arguably been weakened by the “Suplex City” gimmick, which has backed him into wrestling fairly bland, predictable matches, consisting of only a few routine moves.

The outcome of the match should also prove interesting as it might give us a clue where WWE sees each brand in the general hierarchy of things. It’s typically assumed that Raw is still the No. 1 brand in the eyes of WWE, though a victory by Mahal over Lesnar would go miles toward changing that perception.

[Featured Image by WWE]