10 Wrestlers Punished For Trying To Steal The Limelight

8. Rusev & Lana

Vader Jim Cornette Jerry Lawler
WWE.com

Rusev and Lana were only too happy have news of their nuptials shared by gossip gargantuan TMZ despite months of separation on television.

Their announcement flew in the face of the woeful storyline polluting WWE screens for much of 2015. The pair had split over the summer, leading the 'Bulgarian Brute' into the arms of Summer Rae whilst Lana began a new romance with Dolph Ziggler.

The angle was going nowhere fast, but required some hasty retconning to try and have the characters somehow make sense of it. In typical WWE fashion, they...didn't. Summer announced that she'd 'found out' about the proposal, then slapped and dumped Rusev after a routine loss to Ryback.

A WWE.com interview in which Ziggler gleefully abandoned the angle was hastily thrown together as Rusev and Lana were placed in stasis together as the company waited for time to heal the wounds. After so publicly putting a bullet in months and months of work with no payoff, their silence was golden.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation nearly 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett