For the majority of her time in WWE, Lana had acted as the manager for her real-life husband, Miro fka Rusev. Starting in 2014, the kayfabe blonde-head Russian lady was the main reason behind Rusev getting a monstrous push on the roster. With the United States Championship around his waist, he enjoyed an undefeated streak that was intact for almost a year.
Back at WrestleMania 31, the streak came to an end when John Cena defeated Rusev for the title. Lana was blamed by him for the loss as she called off the match on his behalf during Cena’s STF submission. That acted as a split for the real-life couple’s pairing on TV. Eventually, it led to a romantic storyline also involving Dolph Ziggler.
In the summer of 2015, Lana developed an interest in the Show-Off as she was growing distances with Rusev. Soon WWE paired these two up while Rusev was aligned with Danielle Moinet fka Summer Rae. The romantic relationship between Ziggler and the Ravishing Russian was highly appreciated as the two would go on to share some passionate kisses on TV.
WWE Blamed Lana For Leaked Engagement Photo With Rusev
Speaking on Talk Is Jericho podcast, Lana went into detail about how the whole angle began. She was absent one week from WWE TV as the fans chanted ‘We Want Lana.’ This was the first time that WWE creative realized that she could be a huge babyface superstar.
“This is a month before WrestleMania [31]. The whole arena started chanting, ‘We want Lana!’ And I trended for two days. It was wild. I was shook, then it kept on happening, and then WrestleMania, we did the tank…
We went to Vince the following week to pitch an idea, to work with Daniel Bryan, and he was like, ‘No, I’m splitting you guys up.’ And we were shocked.”
Lana Reveals She Was About To Become A Champion Before WWE Release
Lana had no problems kissing Dolph Ziggler
The WWE Chairman pushed the idea that Lana was becoming a grand babyface superstar. So he was the one to come up with the idea that she could have kissed a flamboyant guy like Ziggler on TV to get even more over as a fan favorite superstar. Since she has always considered herself an actress, Vince had no problems in convincing her,
“I started naming all these super hated, heel women on television, and he’s like, ‘Oh, that’s great. A conniving woman. Maybe you kiss a guy and make him jealous,’ and I’m like, ‘Awesome. That’s great. I am an actor.’ I’ve done all different types of roles.
So to me, it’s acting, whatever, and then a month later, he pulled us in and said I was going to be making out with Dolph Ziggler, and we were going into this big program.”
The storyline never got culminated in a proper way as TMZ published a story where Lana got engaged with Rusev in real life at the same time, ruining all the aspects of WWE TV. The storyline was called off and WWE eventually went ahead to punish the female lead in the angle by taking her off TV for three months.
