WRESTLING -CROSS-CULTURAL- WINNING

WWE champ is attracting fans from the company's next big target : INDIA.

''YOU PEOPLE have nothing to celebrate,'' Jinder Mahal shouted into a microphone some months ago at the Dunkin Donuts Center.

The current World Wrestling Entertainment champion was dressed in a black turban and a gray suit with his giant belt hung over his shoulder 

He twisted his face into a deep, angry grimace, and continued. ''But for my people, today marks the  Independence Day of the greatest nation on earth: the great nation of India!''

Thousands of fans leapt out of their seats, stuck their thumbs down and roared their disapproval.

''SmackDown Live'' - one of WWE's weekly live-televised events - has just begun, and  Jin Yuvraj Singh Dhesi, professionally known as Jinder Mahal, in a WWE fight.

In the ring, Mr. Dhesi uses an elaborate celebrations of his Indian culture to fire up the crowds.

The wrestling ring was decorated with a lush rug; a Bhangra dance team made its way down the entrance ramp' a woman in a purple salwar kameez sang the Indian National Anthem.

Mr. Dhesi, the first WWE champion of Indian descent, is a heel {wrestling speak for a villain}, so it is his job to turn crowds into booing angry mobs.

As part of his persona, he exhorts the crowd with statement of cultural confrontation :

That Americans are too clueless to realize that greatness comes from immigrants [and therefore, himself].

The heated rhetoric often sounds like it would be home on a cable news panel rather than wrestling ring.

And one Sunday, it arrived on one of WWE's  biggest stages: SummerSlam, one of the sports-entertainment company's core pay-per-view events, where  Jinder Mahal defeated a rising star named Shinsuke Nakamura.