WWE had an interesting angle going on at one point. Rusev was paired with Summer Rae, and Dolph Ziggler was paired with Lana. The men fought, and eventually the ladies were going to go at it. Sadly, Lana ended up getting hurt and had to have surgery, which required her to miss time from WWE for at least a few months. While it was speculated that she was set to come back later this month or early November, those plans may have changed as well.
Lana is set to film yet another movie, but it is unknown what it is about and if it is a WWE production or not. That very well could keep her off television for a while longer. This was in the plans to begin with, but what wasn’t in the plans was TMZ telling the world that Lana was engaged to Rusev.
The real-life couple bought a home in Tennessee months ago and have enjoyed being with each other both in the real world and on television. However, Lana was getting over big time while Rusev was floundering a bit. WWE wanted to see what they had in Lana, and she was paired with Ziggler. Meanwhile, Summer was paired with Rusev and became a Lana substitute. Then, of course, last week happened.
WWE was planning an engagement angle with Summer and Rusev for television, however, the TMZ article was all over the internet, and WWE would be dumb to try to say that Summer and Rusev were still together on television. According to the Wrestling Observer , the entire segment on WWE RAW with Summer and Rusev was done due to heat on both he and Lana following the big engagement news that actually happened last month. Many assumed that Lana was wearing a ring due to pictures online, but the issue was that no one could be sure. Now we are and WWE had to think of something to retaliate.
Rusev will not have a manager to work with for a while due to Lana missing time.
According to PWInsider , the plan was to put Rusev and Lana back together eventually. However, it was not set to go down this quick. It very well could have been an end of the year storyline for WWE. Now that the TMZ story broke, the company must scramble to put something together. It is uncertain if Lana coming back will happen anytime soon due to the movie. Of course, she very well could film the movie and do television appearances to help the story get off the ground on WWE programming.
What is lost in all of this is that Summer even claimed on WWE RAW that Lana and Rusev had been engaged for a month now. That means he was not only cheating on Summer with Lana but that he was cheating on his new fiance with Summer — if we want to get technical. What is even more blinding about it all is that the Lana and Rusev thing could at least be hidden due to it being a behind-the-scenes issue. The one with Summer was all over WWE programming.
WWE easily could run a cheater angle to keep Lana away from Rusev, seeing as that is what would be obvious. Of course, Dolph Ziggler congratulated Lana on her engagement via social media, so we know they won’t be paired again. It seems that WWE is almost erasing the fact that two women were involved in this angle, yet only one seems to be hurt by the entire thing.
The most glaring thing of all is that instead of WWE ruining a storyline with bad booking or bad writing as the internet fans always claim, the internet actually ruined the WWE storyline before it truly had legs to grow. While WWE was never going to be able to escape the real-life couple of Lana and Rusev, which people knew about well before now, it was the fact that a random major life event in their life happened that they shouldn’t have to hide due to a random WWE storyline. WWE is an entertainment company full of characters, which Lana and Rusev are a part of. That does not mean Miroslav Barnyashev and C.J. Perry have to.
[IMG Credits: WWE.com, Sports Keeda]