Lana: ‘Vince Was Unsure Of My Pairing With Rusev!’
During her appearance on Talk is Jericho with Rusev, Lana spoke about how the couple came together in NXT and more, here are the highlights…
On Auditioning For WWE: “Finally, there were on of the final callbacks and there were about 40 of us girls. And, literally, standing in front of me is Lexi and standing behind me is JoJo. And I’m, like, looking at Lexi’s, Alexa Bliss, yeah, so she’s standing in front of me with her perfect, little bikini body. And JoJo’s going in there singing and all these crazy things. And I’m like, ‘ahh, there’s just no way, there’s just no way.’ I just started speaking Russian. So it was Triple H right in front of me, Kristin Prouty, Canyon [Ceman], Bill DeMott, and so, I literally just start speaking in Russian. And then, I go, I switch over to speaking perfect English. And I knew I got their attention from their reaction and all of their faces. I was like, ‘okay, and I can breakdance.’”
On Dusty Rhodes Putting Her & Rusev Together: “Yeah, he put us [together]. Literally, my first promo class, afterwards, I went up to him and he was like, ‘I want you to work with Rusenoff.’ And then, we played around with several things for a month or two, so many things.”
On Triple H Pulling Her Aside & Telling Her To Be More Cerious [She & Rusev Has Been Doing a Lot of Comedy]: “We did the comedy stuff for a little bit and I remember Hunter saw it. And he pulled me aside and he was like, ‘I want you to try something serious. I want you to try something serious and try some different hairstyles and outfits. I want you to try an accent.’” Lana remembered, “after a few weeks of serious promos, I was put on NXT TV with him as his manager.”
On Vince McMahon Being Unsure of Their Pairing: “Vince loved Rusev. He was like, ‘I want the monster’ and we had been a gimmick together in NXT and everyone loved us together as a gimmick. And I remember Hunter pulling me aside and he’s like, ‘Vince is still deciding, does he want Rusev by himself or does he want him with you?’ And he was like, ‘so I just want to be honest with you and up front. We don’t know and we’re all fighting for it. We think you guys are special as a unit.’ And I remember my heart dropping and being like, ‘oh my gosh! Are you kidding me?’”
