10 Totally Unnecessary WWE Gimmick Changes
9. Lana (Ravishing Russian > Unhappy Lover)
Few will ever understand why WWE wanted this particular change of pace.
Lana and Rusev were a modern-day Randy Savage and Sherri to some. They looked the part as a power couple, and Lana's anti-American promos gave Rusev instant heat. Sure, the "foreign menace" idea was played out, but folks were still into it by 2016.
That's when someone stuck a hand up during creative meetings and asked a dangerous 'what if'. What if Lana tired of Rusev's despotic ways (which hadn't been properly explored before then - they were both heels) and yearned to embrace modern American culture. This 80s B-movie plot sucked from the get go.
Lana stopped encouraging Rusev to crush his enemies and instead started acting like she hadn't lived in the USA for years/was only discovering its ways for the first time. Dolph Ziggler was crudely inserted as a replacement lover as everybody wondered what was going on.
WWE scrapped this a few months in.