10 Times WWE Completely Abandoned Their Talent
4. Rusev
It was during a Ricochet promo on the February 10th edition of Monday Night Raw that loud "Rusev Day" chants echoed throughout the building from a fanbase acutely aware of just how little they were set to get of 'The Bulgarian Brute' on the show.
This is not the first time his name's been used to try and fail to hijack a show, nor the first time it's failed. The fans fought and won once in the 2010s, and the "YES!" movement that helped steer Daniel Bryan back towards the WrestleMania XXX main event was borne out of a special kind of stubbornness no longer harboured by the current generation of fans.
More's the pity too - the kickstarting and cold-dropping of yet another Rusev push is tantamount to workplace bullying at this point. He's given just enough agency in a major to get over but gets more over than he was supposed to and is thus buried in the back-end as a result.
Streetwise veteran Tazz once commented that his Royal Rumble 2000 pop was too loud for his own good amongst a host of ultra-competitive colleagues. Rusev's pops aren't rattling his peers, just the paid professionals that can't be a*sed to push him.