10 WWE Stars Who Were TRULY Buried
4. Rusev
Rusev is in exile, currently, reportedly exhausted by a machine that has failed him.
And it has failed him. Rusev is genuinely a very, very good performer who might yet prove himself to be better than that beyond the confines of the WWE system, like Jon Moxley, PAC and KENTA before him. His grasp of selling is superb, and his registering is indicative of an exceptional talent, too. At his motivated best, Rusev boasts an ability to project himself as a star, as well as an artist. He got over as a retrograde foreign heel, an act he wasn't even best suited to, but Vince McMahon "got" that. He has booked acts in that vein for years and years.
But he doesn't "get" the Rusev of such endearing, irreverent comedic instincts. It isn't broad enough for his "such good sh*t" sensibilities, which was achingly clear when he never got behind the Rusev Day bit in spite of palpable crowd support.
His conduct on Twitter is not shrewd - "Bury me softly brother" was a curtain-revealing in-joke too far - but by that point, you sense Rusev had lost patience and hope. Perhaps that whole mess accelerated the parting of Rusev Day - a senseless waste of an act that were grassroots popular among live crowds, and have individually achieved nothing since.