• RAW Star Says His Character Wasn’t Supposed To Get Popular
During an interview with Chris Van Vliet, Rusev explained how his “Rusev Day” character wasn’t supposed to get popular with the fans:
“It was never meant to be over. It was never supposed to be anything. It was just supposed to be a celebration and here’s the key from the mayor of Plovdiv, my hometown, and it just worked for some reason.
I was a heel, but then I started to relax a little bit, show more of my personality and I guess people started buying that. Then Aiden (English), of course, Aiden is such an essential part of this, with the songs, with introductions, with everything. Without him, probably wouldn’t even be the same.
Just the combo work, man, it was just me having fun and doing the backstage with The New Day, and then the first shirt. They did one shirt of Happy Rusev Day, which was the first one.
I remember putting it out in a backstage promo and there’s the huge reaction from the crowd. What? It’s just a shirt. It’s not that big of a deal. But then it just starts picking up steam and people love chanting Rusev Day and celebrating Rusev Day.
I got that sweet treatment. I have a beach towel, I have sunglasses now that says Rusev Day. I have all these things that say Rusev Day. I was like, what is happening here? I couldn’t believe it.”
• Seth Rollins Reveals Why WWE Didn’t Tell The Shield About Their Breakup In Advance
On the Club Shay Shay podcast, Seth Rollins explained why WWE officials didn’t tell The Shield about their breakup in advance:
“They pitched the story to break up the Shield a few months earlier. We were like, ‘No man, we are not ready for that.’ Like, we’d been the bad guys. The crowd was really starting to get behind us. We wanted to be good guys. We wanted a longer run. Like, we felt we had a lot more in the tank.
And so, we have a match with The Wyatt Family in the Elimination Chamber in February, then we go to WrestleMania. We’re full good guys that point. We do two six-man tags with Evolution right after that. Like we’re awesome. We’re on cloud nine.
The three of us, we show up to the RAW the day after and they knew that if they gave us heads up, we would say no and we would find a way to try to fight out of the breakup.
So, they brought us into the office, and they are like, ‘this is what we’re going to do, and Seth is going to be the one to pull the trigger.’ And I remember like in the room, just the silence, and when we walked out of the room, it was like, what do we do, can we stop this? Are we doing the right thing?
There was a lot of tensions there, and it was mostly we had found our comfort zone as a trio and we were relying on each other, we enjoyed the process, we enjoyed together, but at the end of day, it was one of the most shocking betrayals and most shocking moments in our company.”
