I saw on Facebook trending stories the other night that WWE superstar, Rusev recently got engaged to his real-life girlfriend, also WWE superstar, Lana.
That’s great and all, because the two of them have looked like the happiest couple over the last year, to those who occasionally see them on social media posting pictures of themselves. The two of them at Florida State games, the two of them at tourist attractions seen while both being on the road together, and the two of them simply looking like the lovely couple that they are, regardless of the fact that he’s a Bulgarian monster, and she’s over-the-top Russian eye candy, when on screen.
However, as nice and sweet as this story is for their real-life lives, it does make things interesting as far as WWE storylines go. Currently, on-screen, the two of them are “broken up,” and are in this terrible false drama storyline of the two of them basically trying to make the other jealous by having relationships with new partners, with Rusev picking up Summer Rae, and Lana becoming involved with Dolph Ziggler.
Over the last months, both Rusev and Ziggler have unfortunately been put into this storyline that amounts to nothing but a miserable holding pattern until better storylines emerge for them, with ultimately the women getting tangled up with each other, creating some terrible cat fights while other women wrestlers are starting to steal shows.
More recently however, Summer Rae has “proposed” to Rusev in storyline, to where Rusev has tentatively accepted, but demands that he gets some championship gold before he fully commits. That being said, it’s likely the storyline will develop to a reignited feud with John Cena for the United States championship, but will also involve Dolph Ziggler, since he recently was supposed to face Cena for the strap, before being taken out by The New Day.
The point is, the wrestling industry is a long way beyond the old kayfabe days where wrestler personal lives were as hidden as buried treasure. The internet and social media make it essentially impossible for wrestlers to maintain an exclusive persona for television, and not be exposed in their personal lives. Part of it is the business aspect of the industry, and the other is simply the fact that the internet and social media is just that invasive. How can the Bella Twins be manipulative bitches in the ring, but then be gracious PR goddesses promoting children’s tumor foundation research in an interstitial 55 seconds later?
In spite of current storylines, anyone who follows wrestling, by now already knows the story of Rusev and Lana’s real-life engagement. And because we’re in The Era of Fans Trolling the Business, it’s only a matter of time before smarmy smark fans start bringing signs to arenas that passively aggressively congratulate Rusev and Lana on their engagement, question Summer Rae, or any other sort of message that acknowledges the real-life affairs of the superstars, to screw with the fact that they’re visible on live television. Even if their signs are confiscated, they’ll undoubtedly create a mock chant that can’t possibly be suppressed, whenever Rusev, Lana or any combination gets in the ring together.
And when things like that occur, it’s impossible for the commentators to not acknowledge it, without sounding like obvious tools, or they can acknowledge it, and give confirmation to what really should be private knowledge.
The saving grace to all this is that it’s apparent that the Rusev/Ziggler storyline is losing steam, and so few storylines go as long as this does in the first place. And Summer Rae, as much as I think she’s on the cusp of X-Pac Heat, I do acknowledge that she’s a decent worker in spite of her poor in-ring skills, has a track record for always being on the losing end of storylines. She’s basically like a much prettier version of Luna Vachon.
Undoubtedly, she’ll be the loser of this feud, but thanks to the real-life actions of Rusev and Lana, her time on television might come a little bit sooner, rather than later, and if that happens, she becomes a loser on a larger level than just storylines, because then she’ll probably be taken off of TV again.
