CJ Perry has spoken about how United States President Donald Trump told her and her husband, Rusev, to change their WWE characters.
Speaking on TMZ’s Inside The Ring podcast, CJ Perry said that when Donald Trump first became U.S. President in 2017, he told her and Rusev to change their WWE characters to remove the politics from that aspect of their act. She said:
“Once Trump became president, he sat me and Miro down, and he’s like, ‘Okay, no more politics.’ He’s like, ‘It’s too polarising and controversial.’”
This was during a time when Perry, then known as Lana, and Rusev portrayed anti-American, pro-Russian characters and had praised Russian President Vladimir Putin on WWE’s programming.
He slowly started moving away from the pro-Russian gimmick in 2015, when he became more known as “The Bulgarian Brute” and started dressing in Bulgarian coloured gear and not Russian coloured as he had been.
When Did Rusev Come Back To WWE?
Rusev came back to WWE on the April 21 episode of Raw, attacking Alpha Academy’s Akira Tozawa and Otis. He made his in-ring return on the May 5 episode, defeating Otis in a singles match and began feuding with Sheamus, with their feud concluding at Clash in Paris in an Old Fashioned Donnybrook Brawl match where he won via submission.
