Bollywood Boyz On Being Teamed With Jinder Mahal, Say Mahal Was ‘Very Good’ To Them

The Bollywood Boyz recently discussed being paired up with Jinder Mahal and working with the WWE Champion in a new interview. Harv Sihra and Gurv Sihra spoke with Wrestling Inc and you can see some highlights below:

On the Cruiserweight Classic being their WWE tryout
Gurv: “Even at that time, we were the only tag team I believe that were participants in that tournament. For us it was like ‘okay, maybe this is our quote, unquote tryout or dark match or whatever you want to call it.’ And I remember having that talk with one of the higher ups who did say ‘go ahead and show Hunter what you can do in the ring. And we’ll take it from there.’ Was that it? At that point we were like ‘yeah, this might be the only opportunity we get in a WWE ring.’

Harv: “I remember the mindset going in was ‘I don’t care if I get signed.’ It’s like you play in the NHL once. ‘Wow, I did it.’ At that time we had obviously spent a decade on the indies and didn’t think it was really going to happen. We were like ‘we’ll get to wrestle in a WWE ring. I don’t know if it’s ever going to happen again, but it’s like cool to tell your children some day. Hey I had the jersey on. I wrestled in a WWE ring. I got footage.’ You could tell them my journey in wrestling paid off. I made it, I made it to the WWE. But we kept being brought back. We got eliminated in the first round, but then we got brought back for the second round, third round. We kept doing dark matches and then we did something on NXT. For us it was like ‘okay, I think we stood out. We’re special, we’re unique.’ We came in like four or five times and we felt eventually like we were going to get it. They wanted to keep bringing us in. But then I think, somehow 205 Live the idea came in, and a bunch of us got signed. But yeah. We felt very confident after the first one.”

On being paired with Mahal:
Harv: “Road Dogg [had the idea]. He was the writer on Smackdown and he talked to us after the show so I’m assuming he came up with it. But he was the one that sat us down and said ‘This is where we’re going and it’s a huge opportunity. It was very similar to what I did with Jeff as the Roadie.’ As soon as that clicked in our minds it was like, you look back and I don’t know how are careers had gone if we didn’t do it, but you look back and it was a huge opportunity.”

Gurv: “Just to add context to that, after the very first show of 205 Live we went back to NXT down at the Performance Center. So that call to come back to TV’s on that Tuesday were very random for us. We thought we were going back to 205 Live. But we showed up to Louisville, Kentucky that night and they’re like ‘oh we’re going to pair you guys. You guys are going to come out to the ring during this match and you guys are going to be off the races with Jinder’, which we thought was going to be a four week run until Backlash. But going back to what my brother was saying, I know Road Dogg pulled us aside and said ‘we don’t know how big this is going to be pretty big for everyone involved, especially for India.’ It got bigger and bigger. I think from what I recall it was supposed to be a one off and it was supposed to lead to Backlash. I’m assuming we impressed the higher ups enough where they were like ‘no we got to keep these kids in.’”

On the sudden callup without warning
Gurv: “I consider our call up very old school. Whereas like it wasn’t like ‘okay you guys are going to get drafted to Smackdown and we’re going to put a hype video behind you guys, right?’ It wasn’t anything like that. It was more ‘come up to TV’s.’ ‘What are we doing?’ ‘Okay, this is what you’re doing.’ And literally it was like week to week, day by day, ‘okay, get in the rental car and you guys are going to go to the next set of live events in, like, California.’ That’s all we were getting.”

On working with Mahal
Gurv: “[It was] great. Everything was on the job, learning and training. When we started riding up and down the highways with him, he was teaching us. Because he had already come once, left, come back and was now back in the game. So he was teaching us the ins and outs of locker room etiquette. ‘Here’s the gym, here’s the hotel.’ Just a brother teaching us the ways. It was cool because, even on our first European trip, you don’t know everything. You don’t know like the veterans sit in the back or like, whatever it is. He was very like hands on as far as teaching us. But we learned so much from him. The coolest thing about not only Jinder’s program with Randy but when he worked with Cena and AJ, we were like sponges in those dressing rooms when they’d be putting together matches for the program. Knowing why they’re doing what and the thought of the match and learning on the fly. Stuff you can’t learn in a classroom setting.”

Harv: “He was very good to us. I remember when he became WWE Champion he was like ‘hey guys, we are the WWE Champions.’ That was like ‘you didn’t need to say it.’ He’s the guy going out there, having fifteen, twenty minute matches on the live events while we come in for the bumps. But for him to say that made us feel like ‘okay, we’re a part of this.’ And he was very good to us and he didn’t really need to be sometimes. Obviously we had known him prior to WWE when we were coming up through the independents. But yeah, very good to us, very kind to us. And it was a good run. It was good for what it was. And going back to kind of talking about, we don’t know where our careers would’ve gone if we stayed in NXT. Maybe there would’ve been more budget cuts, who knows at that time? The fact that we came up like this, earned our merit like this with the boys. We had a good, fruitful five year run for something we didn’t think was going to last very long.”