Wait. I'm sure you're all saying, "but Rusev is such a well-defined character that he's not desperate for anything?" Well, that's where you're wrong. You're actually confusing Rusev, with Lana, his manager, who may be one of the least desperate figures on WWE television at the present time. However, insofar as Rusev, there may be no more desperate figure in WWE at-present. In being the less over half of a tandem that's drawing major heat, Rusev's almost comic need to more than obviously "sell" his injuries during matches creates a level of desperation in Rusev that feels like the performer screaming "look at me, look at me selling, look at me doing my job out here, look at me working just as hard as you likely believe my really hot manager is." For as much as Rusev's matches look utterly dominant, there's potentially something deeper happening that deserves contemplation.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.
