Lana recently revealed an issue that her husband, Rusev, had during his time in AEW. She revealed that this was what led them to decide to choose WWE instead of staying with the Tony Khan-led promotion.
The Bulgarian Brute made his AEW debut in 2020, and he was originally affiliated with Kip Sabian as his “Best Man”. During the latter parts of his time with the company, he became “The Redeemer”, and his last match was at Worlds End 2023. He departed from the promotion in February this year after requesting his release.
While appearing on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Lana talked about a reason why she and Rusev thrive more in WWE. She mentioned how this was because of their style of storytelling.
“Both him and I love telling stories, and WWE is a storytelling factory. And he is incredible at what he does. He’s the ‘Super Athlete.’ He loves playing a villain. He loves, absolutely loves WWE-style storytelling.
She then revealed that her husband also wanted to wrestle more often. It seems that Rusev didn’t care if he made more money than AEW, if he could appear on TV more in WWE. This seems to be what led him to ask for his release from Tony Khan.
“So I think it was — and he wanted to wrestle every week on TV. That was a big thing for him. He loves wrestling. It wasn’t about a check for him. So it was like, yeah, maybe he made more money at AEW or something, but he wanted — it was more important for him to get out there and be wrestling, it was really hard for him to not be working.” [H/T SLAM]
Lana reveals she got in trouble with Tony Khan due to comments about Rusev
Last week, while appearing on TMZ’s Inside the Ring, Lana shared that in the past, she would go viral for the wrong reasons, which Tony Khan would call her husband about. During some media calls and events, she would hint at Rusev going back to WWE, which would end up going viral and bring out several articles about this.
The former TNT Champion ended up having to do a little bit of damage control, as the situation at the time blew up.
“I needed to plead the Fifth because I was doing too many interviews to make him go viral. And then Tony Khan would call him and be pissed (…) We do a 6 a.m. radio interview in Wisconsin. This is like nothing on media, this is just a little phoner, you know, 5:45 for like North Dakota. I love North Dakota. And next thing you know, it’s going trending on Twitter for four days.”
In the end, this all ended up being true as Rusev is now back in WWE. It seems like he thrives better in this environment, and it will be interesting to see where this run takes him.
Edited by Enzo Curabo
