YMMV / Rusev and Lana

aka: Alexander Rusev

• Adorkable: Rusev began falling more and more into this category since the birth of Rusev Day. Following his proper Heel–Face Turn in June 2018, he finally slotted into the trope for good, completing his personality switch from ruthless, brutish conqueror to enthusiastic, honorable family man just in time to win his third United States Championship from Shinsuke Nakamura.
• Awesome Ego: Upon becoming The Redeemer in AEW, Miro becomes an ostentatious Large Ham utterly convinced of his greatness, and while still booed as a heel, is still clearly enjoyed and agreed with in this regard.
• Awesome Music: What better way to make a Foreign Wrestling Heel more intimidating than an aggressive and epic orchestral piece?
• Base-Breaking Character: Miro's initial "Best Man" gimmick in AEW. Critics have sneered at the former Bulgarian Brute in the WWE being reduced to a blond-haired, video-game-obsessed flunky for mid-card nuisance Kip Sabian, regarding it as a huge step down for him. After seeing how Rusev's last story in WWE was a travesty where he was portrayed as a sex maniac by his wife, who proceeded to leave him for a huge black man, and where he repeatedly got humiliated before losing the feud and vanishing from TV up until his release, these fans had understandably expected AEW to go out of their way to immediately portray him as a monster to show up WWE for their misuse of him. Supporters of the new character have pointed out that the Boisterous Bruiser "Best Man" gimmick is a lot closer to Miro's real personality than the "Bulgarian Brute" ever was and, regardless of what you think of it, he's clearly having the time of his life playing it. After Miro finally (albeit predictably) snapped, turned on Kip and brutalised him, then defeated Darby Allin to become the TNT Champion, the base skewed far harder to the positive side, with fans of both the badass character and the genuine personality simultaneously satisfied.
• Designated Villain: Ever since he made his debut on the main roster, he's constantly found himself in this role time and time again. See Unintentionally Sympathetic down below.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Despite being a blatant misogynist (as in, outright says that women are silly and inferior), as well as a violent, angry, spiteful brute, there are still people who believe that Rusev's character was the face in his feud with Dolph Ziggler. Some would attribute this to the misogyny of people saying this, but most of the blame lies with WWE's poor writing and booking that failed to get across why Dolph should have been the hero. Or why Rusev would've ever taken direction in his career from a woman he thought was inferior to him for so long. Or why surrendering on Rusev's behalf out of compassion twice during his US Championship feud with John Cena beforehand instead of allowing Cena to viciously put him on the shelf^note which would've resulted in him being stripped of the title anyway, thus her actions were just as caring as they were pragmatic, no more or less so meant that the once coldly efficient Lana, brains of the operation and lead weekly trash-talker against the very country in which they were working, had suddenly become a demure wallflower no longer capable of directing her champion. Instead the angle came across as "Rusev Is The Straw Misogynist Foreign Wrestling Heel And Therefore We Must Hate Him", which ended up doing more to make people hate the storyline itself than to cement Rusev as a villain.
  • Early heel Lana herself would ripe for this list, to the point this trope might as well be renamed "Lana in Frame-Fitting Business Suits". She was a massive shit-talker who routinely took advantage of Rusev's Villainous Valor and status as The Juggernaut to gloat on a weekly basis about Russia's superiority over America, and Vladimir Putin was a truly inspirational leader. However, the fact that she was one of the talents most dedicated to Kayfabe WWE has (known back then for never breaking character), and well as the fact that she's a grade-A Ms. Fanservice, only made crowds want to see her more and more. When she was filming a movie and disappeared from Rusev's side for a while, there were plenty of "We Want Lana!" chants.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Despite being basically a mid-card heel, Rusev being someone who has both in-ring talent and ability to play his character very well has gained him great support from fans, to the point where he was one of the few that got cheered in 2015 Royal Rumble.^note Granted, he was the last one left aside from Roman Reigns and the crowd was in "Anyone but Roman" mode, which is ironic as the year before it was Reigns in the same position when they were in "Anyone but Batista" mode, but still, the crowd's quickness to support him in that situation didn't come from out of nowhere.
  • Lana is even more of an example, when she was filming a movie and disappeared from Rusev's side for a while there were plenty of "We want Lana!" chants. This is almost all Draco in Leather Pants because unlike Rusev, she doesn't even have an honorable side to her. She's just a massive shit-talker. However, she's one of the most Kayfabe dedicated talents WWE has, as she's known for NEVER breaking character and also she's a grade-A Ms. Fanservice.
  • In 2018, one of the go-to chants whenever the crowd is dissatisfied with a match or angle on Raw is "Rusev Day!". Even (or perhaps especially) on episodes in which Rusev doesn't have a match, because the fans want more Rusev.
• Harsher in Hindsight: It's a good thing that WWE were able to do their storyline of Rusev and Lana being Vladimir Putin fanatics in 2014-2015, considering that since 2016, several accusations have been leveled at Putin regaring American politics in particular that would've made using him as subject for pro wrestling storylines result in heat of the kinds not seen since Muhammad Hassan.^note And even then Rusev and Lana weren't immune from this; one promo Lana made in July 2014 where she chastised America for holding Russia responsible for "recent events" caused controversy due to being made shortly after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down and Russia was accused of being responsible, though they ultimately came away unscathed from this.
• Memetic Mutation: RUSEV DAY~!^note Rusev teamed up with Aiden English to introduce a new holiday named after him to the world, claiming that every day is Rusev Day. Fans took it and ran with it.
• The Scrappy:
  • Hey, remember when Lana would get "We Want Lana!" chants even when she wasn't with Rusev? Then WWE runs an angle where she "divorces" Rusev for Bobby Lashley, filled with all kinds of unsavory undertones, including Black Is Bigger in Bed, also resulting in her losing her accent in exchange for the most whiny voice imaginable. Then the chants stopped. The storyline as a whole was so reviled that it was only a few votes short of winning WrestleCrap's 2019 Gooker Award, only losing to the infamous Seth Rollins/"The Fiend" Bray Wyatt "Hell in a Cell" match at Hell in a Cell 2019. To put it in perspective, they put the angle as a candidate while it was still ongoing.
  • Even after Rusev was released and Lana was split from Lashley, fans are still sick of her. Partly this is because of how WWE have booked her (going in-depth about it would fill an entire page, with her "victory" at Survivor Series 2020 being particularly Face Palm-worthy and making the entire women's division look like a joke), but a lot of it is also because, without Rusev or even Lashley, she has to be portrayed as just a female wrestler, making the fans much less tolerant of her shortcomings in the ring. While CJ can play a great character when she's allowed to (which currently she isn't), with the best will in the world she's just not a great wrestler.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: With Rusev being released by WWE in April 2020 and later cheerfully signing with AEW in September of that year under his (shortened) real name Miro, it's easy to sum up and assess his entire WWE career as being one of the biggest wastes of potential WWE has fumbled in the entire 2010s. Rusev was freakishly athletic, technically talented, had a great character, and was incredibly over, yet WWE did almost nothing to capitalize on what they had, with Rusev never winning anything other than the United States Championship (three times) despite easily being potential WWE Champion material.^note The most likely reason is Rusev was constantly in the doghouse with upper management. The first big offense happened when he and Lana allowed their engagement to be leaked to the media (with evidence pointing themselves as the leakers, and doing so intentionally, although after being released from WWE Lana claimed in her interview with Chris Jericho that it had been an acquaintance of theirs that they'd shared the image with) putting an end to the Rusev/Lana/Ziggler/Rae story arc. Next, Rusev cut his hair short without notifying or asking anyone if it was okay to do. Finally, the writers were angry at how the Rusev Day thing exploded when it wasn't their idea. Note that all three of these are really bad reasons for wasting a talent like Rusev and have only led to more criticism of how WWE does things.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: "Rusev Day" was possibly THE single most-over act in the entire company for most of 2018. So what did WWE do with this can't-lose storyline prospect...? You guessed it- absolutely nothing whatsoever until they had Aiden English betray Rusev, leading to a very short and pointless feud. Like Zack Ryder before him, WWE seemed to be offended that Rusev had managed to get over without their permission and did their best to stifle any trace of momentum he had.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • His feud with the Big Show has this in spades. Big Show tearing down the Russian flag (disrespecting flags in general is a big no-no) made him look like an ass. This eventually led to a match on the 10/13/14 Raw where after enduring punishment from Big Show, Rusev was able to fight his way back and eventually lock in the Accolade. Mark Henry comes down first to cheer on Show but then jumps on the apron to run interference before Rusev knocks him off and re-applies his finisher only to be attacked from behind by Henry. Afterwards Show and Henry surround Rusev on the outside and instead of running away he hands Lana the Russian flag, waits until she's out of harm's way and attacks both men head on despite being outnumbered eventually being knocked out by Show after taking out Henry. This left people scratching their heads as Rusev, the dirty heel, lost to shenanigans and bravely stood his ground while Henry and Show, the heroic faces, had to use cheap shots and a numbers advantage to gain the upper hand and take him out. And then there's the time that Big Show had the Russian flag replaced with the US flag for one of Rusev's flag-drop-down sequences…when Rusev went for the US flag, a guy dressed in a US military uniform rushed the ring, only to be promptly kicked in the face by Rusev. Although you could make a case for this being a heel action since by this point the fake soldier had been already grabbed by security, cue the weird moment of Big Show treating the very act of hitting a US soldier as a Moral Event Horizon action while Michael Cole on commentary was telling viewers to never go over the barricade… It went to the point that fans and reviewers began to wonder if WWE were trying to frame the feud in such a way that Rusev could be presented as a Foreign Wrestling Heel in America, while he could be presented as a patriotic Russian face in Russia.
  • The Rusev-Lana breakup angle also involving Summer Rae and Dolph Ziggler is having much the same effect, if only to further establish Rusev as a Jerkass Woobie. When Lana was using Ziggler to get back at Rusev for his borderline abusive Villainous Breakdown at first, Ziggler was fully willing to go along for the ride and to constantly screw with Rusev, only worsening his downward spiral. Rusev ended up getting with Summer and clearly using her to up the ante on making Lana jealous, only for Lana to find that she actually liked Ziggler. Then the Summer/Dolph tease came along one night when Summer went in Dolph's locker room while he was showering in order to seduce him. When this failed and she resorted to claiming the opposite happened, Ziggler found himself solemnly trying to make his case to Lana…while still teasing Summer with an extravagant "peace offering" for the sole purpose of messing with Rusev, who remained unconvinced by Summer's pleas that she would never cheat on him. And Dolph was still the face. Ziggler even fully acknowledged once in a dot-com interview that he was ruining Rusev's life and Rusev had good reason to be upset with him, but reasoned that his actions were justified because of…Rusev's anti-Americanism. A side of his character that was primarily driven by Lana and largely de-emphasized after their breakup. In fact, that in itself is something the entire storyline has had to ignore in order to work, since any acknowledgement of it would make Lana's suddenly demure, naive demeanor in the face of Rusev's meltdown come across as a drastically blatant Wounded Gazelle Gambit. At least when they did another angle like this in 2019, they had the good sense not to try and villify Rusev first, framing him entirely as the victim.
  • Even when Lana and Rusev reconciled due to their real-life engagement, Summer wasted no time framing Rusev as the manipulative cheater in their relationship despite her earlier machinations and Lana's wrist injury providing the perfect kayfabe justification and window of opportunity for both Rusev and Lana's change of heart. Furthermore, Summer quickly resorted to taking revenge by getting herself involved in the latest Dolph-Rusev match as special referee and deliberately using her position to cost Rusev the match, showing that she's still just as duplicitous and vindictive as she and Layla were with Fandango in 2013, another situation in which she was treated as the face for screwing with an ex-boyfriend's career in a sanitized WWE where he could never get retribution. For what it's worth on Ziggler's part, he's not down with getting used to sate yet another girl's issues with Rusev, but it's doubtful that he'll ever admit to being less than honorable here.
  • This trope struck again during Rusev's feud with Roman Reigns. Sure, he is being booed by the crowd occasionally, but the fact remains that he is standing up for his wife's honour after seeing her disrespected by the supposed babyface. It doesn't help much that the supposed babyface is still roundly hated by most crowds, of course. Even allowing for that, it's hard for this observer to see how Rusev is the heel in this situation. Oh, and the repeated taunt that Lana is a "mail order bride" just comes across as stupid because everyone watching knows that this is a legitimate couple, and also that Lana is more American than Rusev so if anything, he would be the mail order husband. Sure enough, when Rusev returned with Lana from the unsolicited beating Reigns gave him at SummerSlam, cost Reigns a shot at the Universal Championship, and proceeded to Machka Kick the Samoan Juggernaut, Raw ended that night with fans chanting Rusev's name. Even WhatCulture Wrestling identified it during their United States title match at Hell in a Cell:
    @WhatCultureWWE: So we're all wanting valiant babyface Rusev to defend his wife and family's honour, and vanquish the dastardly Roman Reigns, yeah? #HIAC

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