15 WWE Wrestlers Who Lost A Name

6. (Alexander) Rusev

Mustafa Ali
WWE.com

Blink and you might have missed the fact that Rusev was not his first name.

When the Bulgarian Brute debuted on Raw in 2014, he went by the name Alexander Rusev, a name that seems a little weak for the Super-Athlete in retrospect. But just a couple months into his run, the first name disappeared and was never mentioned again, leaving us with the now well-known one-word moniker.

It turns out that this shortened name has played really well, much like Drago in Rocky IV (you rarely hear him referred to by his first name of Ivan). Besides, “Alexander Rusev Day” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.