Summer Rae Recalls Rusev and Lana WWE Storyline Ending Abruptly
Summer Rae recently appeared on Insight With Chris Van Vilet to discuss a wide range of industry-related topics, including her thoughts on the Rusev/Lana WWE storyline that she was involved in and how it abruptly ended due to Rusev and Lana’s real-life relationship leaking to TMZ. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
On the Rusev and Lana storyline:
The Rusev, Lana, Dolph storyline was cool because it actually seems really organic like bringing in Dolph, you know, like having us do that we all really enjoyed working with each other when it first like started happening, me Single White Femaling her like pretending to be her and stuff like that was good. But yeah, when it definitely broke down Lana got injured. I can’t remember what and she was still learning how to wrestle at the time. Like she hadn’t wrestled much on the main roster so I was trying to teach her things as well as we’re going along. Yeah, when the TMZ storyline got mysteriously leaked to TMZ, no one cares, we aren’t Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, you know. That really set Vince off and like everyone, because I don’t know why, but we were like the favorite storyline of him. It was crazy. I think at the time, Cena had had a storyline for four months, and we were going on three, so just wasn’t something you were seeing like how they do nowadays, like amazing, long storylines. The storytelling in WWE right now is just really coming around so differently. But it was interesting that we were like, we were getting crossover position, like great, you know, positions. And so when I went there, he was really upset. I think the head writers at the time were really upset too, because they had just been so invested in it. And I think the fans aren’t dumb like to know that there was never a payoff like we never had a payoff match. Lana and I never went back and forth. We never had the doubles match even like, so clearly something went wrong in the storyline. And so thank God, we were in Chicago, the best wrestling crowd, in my opinion in the nation, because Europe is great, as well.
On the sudden conclusion to the storyline:
So when the Rusev Lana storyline blew up in our faces. We’re in Chicago, just happened to be, and I lived in Chicago for seven years big Bears fan. So like people knew that. And usually, I would get pretty solid reactions even if I was on Main Event or something. I was like, Oh, that’s weird I’m over. And we found out that day, I think they called me into the office. I don’t even think it was Vince. I think the head writers called me and they were like, hey, it’s on TMZ, no one’s bigger than WWE. That’s a big thing for Vince was like, and Cena would always talk about that, like, no one’s bigger than WWE. And they don’t want you to think that either. So like, Oh, you want to go to TMZ and say you guys are married? Well, and that kind of ruins our storyline, which in my opinion, I don’t think it did ruin it, it’s kayfabe, it’s day one. But yeah, like you want to do that? Well, watch this. It’s over. You’re breaking up with him today. Do you want to write your own promo?