What’s the story?
Rusev and Lana joined Chris Jericho on his podcast, Talk is Jericho, to discuss several aspects of his career and spoke about how he worked his way to get to the WWE and had to work other jobs to support himself.
Rusev spoke about how the late Dusty Rhodes gave him a lot of his ideas and how Rhodes wanted to give him a genie gimmick.
“He has given me so many good and bad ideas that you have no idea! He tried to make me a genie. 'Baby, I see you with that new gear. You look like a genie! I want you to work with that Russian chick, Anya, and she's going to, baby, rub the lamp and you're going to - pop - appear!' He made me do genie promos for the next three weeks.”
In case you didn’t know...
Rusev is a Bulgarian native and spent most of his pre-wrestling years, competing in rowing and powerlifting. He would come to the United States and would relocate to California to pursue his dreams of becoming a professional wrestler.
The Heart of the Matter
Here’s what Rusev had to say about his journey:
"I had the opportunity to come to the United States of America as an exchange student, so I had to come for four months, work, and then, go back. I had to paint houses. I never painted in my life. I got fired a month later.”
Rusev also spoke about how working at Wendy’s and how they fired him even sooner than he lost his painting job.
“I worked at Wendy's for a week. Three guys there worked and there were seven managers. How is that even [possible]? It's so American. We need more workers than managers.”
Rusev said that he received a majority of his wrestling training under Rikishi and Gangrel and added that he wanted to learn as much as possible from two Superstars who were with the WWE at the height of the company’s popularity and who stayed for so long.
“I've been training for three years now, or so, at Knokx Pro, or two years, with Rikishi and I picked up as much information as I could because, I mean, they were in the business for so long and had all the knowledge. And they thought that I was ready and 2010, SummerSlam, they sent me for a tryout."
What’s next?
Rusev has managed to accomplish a lot in the past few years and has secured wins against several WWE Superstars including a victory against John Cena at the inaugural Fastlane pay-per-view. He has also won the United States Championship twice and is currently in a tag team with Jinder Mahal.
He’s also a relatively young wrestler, so the WWE have chances to make something out of Rusev in the next few years…provided they want to.
Sportskeeda’s take
Rusev has carved a niche for himself as a mid card Superstar and there are many positives if the company gets behind him. His in-ring ability, as well as his mic skills, have made him one of the more entertaining wrestlers in the midcard.
Unfortunately, his tag team with Mahal doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and is blatantly what is holding him back. This tag team probably won’t last long, but if it does, it may take some time away from Rusev that could be spent contending for Championships and building himself up.
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