Lana was one of the mainstays on WWE television during almost her entire career with the company. She had no traditional experience in wrestling but when it came to delivering entertainment on TV, she had all the ingredients to live up to the expectations. Over the years, the former WWE Diva had her share of experiences in different kinds of storylines.
However, Lana is best known for her time in WWE as Rusev’s manager. The real-life couple debuted on the main roster of WWE with an anti-American gimmick to get some natural heel heat. This brought immense success to the latter one as he’s emerged as one of the most dominant United States Champions in the history of the company. The pairing was a success as it made it through the big stage.
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But it seems that Vince McMahon wasn’t very keen on seeing the duo together in a storyline together. For him, the logic was that Lana was a hot woman and it doesn’t make any sense for her to get paired with a top heel like Rusev.
Lana couldn’t agree to Vince McMahon’s idea in the past
During a recent interview with Wrestling INC, former WWE Superstar Lana remembered how Vince McMahon always had a “traditional” view of booking women which is much different than Triple H. She stated that the ex-WWE CEO did not want her to form a pair with her now-husband Rusev as he assumed that Rusev would be cheered due to a beautiful woman always accompanying her,
“Because 10 years ago, five years ago even, Triple H was giving women a lot of opportunities in this space of being a manager, but Vince was a little bit more traditional, and he almost didn’t want me to be paired with Miro because he’s like, ‘A hot girl can’t be with a heel guy, or he’ll get cheered.’”
Lana added that Vince McMahon’s logic was absurd. She pointed out how unlikable men have paired up with attractive women in real life and no problem should be there on doing such an angle on WWE TV,
“And it’s like, ‘Well, why can’t you be hot and evil?’ This is… For what? I don’t understand. There’s a bunch of people like that in real life. Why can’t we do that?”
Eventually, there was a point when Lana was earning cheers from the WWE audience, leading to babyface chants for her with Rusev still being a heel. This is the reason that WWE also ended the pair and started another romantic angle with Dolph Ziggler but that didn’t have a proper culmination.
