wrestling / News
Raj Dhesi Reveals How Long He Had To Prep For Promo With The Rock
Image Credit: WWE
Raj Dhesi recently looked back on his time as Jinder Mahal in WWE, notably his famous promo at Raw Day 1 with The Rock. Dhesi made an appearance on the January 1st, 2024 episode of Raw to cut a promo, before The Rock showed up and interrupted him. The segment quickly went viral and garnered over nine and a half million views.
Dhesi spoke with Denise Salcedo for a new interview and recalled the reaction to the promo, and how much time he had to prepare for it. You can see highlights below (per F4W Online):
On the Segment Itself:
“Awesome. That’s like a highlight of a lifetime, right? That’s one of those moments that you’ll remember for the rest of your life. But yes, I got to stand across from the ring while Rock chopped it up on the mic, but I chopped it up on the mic right back. I really felt like I held my own and I showed the WWE Universe and WWE management a different side of me, a different promo style, but unfortunately, we couldn’t capitalize on it, but all good. It was a great moment.”
On the Reaction to the Promo:
“I got a voice message from The Rock thanking me and he had a great time. So, yeah, all good. More people messaged me after that promo with The Rock than when I won the WWE Championship… I guess it was a bigger moment. More people saw it, like, ‘You’re in the ring with The Rock,’ like the most recognizable name in all of entertainment, or in anything, in the whole entire world. So yeah, it was definitely a huge moment. But yes, that was a bigger moment in terms of messages and phone calls than the WWE Championship.”
On Not Having Much Time to Prepare For It:
“That was a high-pressure situation, like leading up to that promo, because I found out a couple days prior- not any direction of the promo or not where it’s going. I was just told, ‘Hey, you’re going to go out there, and then Rock’s going to crash.’ That’s it. That’s all I was told. And I got the promo the morning of from Brian Gewirtz. He wrote it. That’s when I read it. Like the kind of talking trash about the United States and the way things are here. And I thought, ‘We can’t do this on WWE TV.’”
