10 Times WWE Totally Dropped The Ball On Rusev
5. Moving To SmackDown
Outside of his rivalry with Roman Reigns over the United States Championship, Rusev's run on Raw from 2016 to 2017 was pretty much a bust.
Thankfully, he was given a fresh change of scenery when he was moved to SmackDown in the spring of 2017 as part of the inaugural Superstar Shake-Up while he was out injured. Although he was quietly separated from Lana (who went on to return in the SmackDown Women's Championship picture), he had the opportunity to come back better than he was before.
Rusev appeared on SmackDown via satellite in late April, refusing to compete for the blue brand until he was granted a WWE Championship match at Money in the Bank, which gave fans hope for his future.
The storyline was abruptly dropped once Jinder Mahal became champion and was never acknowledged again. It was months before Rusev was seen or heard from again, but on the July 4 episode, he finally resurfaced on SmackDown to confront John Cena.
His next few pay-per-view matches against Cena and Randy Orton all ended in defeat for The Bulgarian Brute, including at SummerSlam where he was beaten in an embarrassing 10 seconds.
Somehow, Rusev was worse off on SmackDown than he was on Raw. It was almost as if officials were going out of their way to spite him at this point.