Fans of the Bulgarian Brute Rusev were taken on a real roller coaster ride in the past two weeks, when the extremely popular and extremely underutilized Superstar was given, and then pulled from, then placed BACK INTO, a very high-profile match at the Greatest Royal Rumble in Saudi Arabia, which will take place on April 27.
Last Wednesday, WWE announced that Rusev would be taking on the Undertaker in a Casket Match at the GRR. (Still love that acronym!) Rusev tweeted about the match in an extremely tongue-in-cheek fashion, then appeared in a TMZ video with an extremely misleading title talking about the match.
Bury me softly, Brother https://t.co/IWnBvL20Ez
— Miro (@ToBeMiro) April 11, 2018
The next day, WWE announced that Undertaker’s new opponent would be Chris Jericho in another dream matchup, which would be one of only a handful of times, ever, that Jericho and the Dead Man have faced off.
BUT WAIT! On Monday, WWE announced that the Rusev-Undertaker casket match would be on once again.
After much thought, I have notified @WWE officials that I have changed my mind. @RusevBUL will celebrate #RusevDay by burying The Undertaker in the sands of Saudi Arabi and will win the Casket Match at #WWEGRR ! #RusevCrush ! Have a Happy Rusev Day !
— CJ Perry (@TheCJPerry) April 16, 2018
After @LanaWWE's endorsement, the #CasketMatch is BACK ON between @RusevBUL and The #Undertaker at @WWE Greatest Royal Rumble! #WWEGRR https://t.co/57z9aRgINj
— WWE (@WWE) April 16, 2018
This is, of course, all extremely weird. And the weirdness was compounded by the fact that Rusev removed all mentions of WWE from his social media profiles. That fed into rampant speculation, as rumors flew before WrestleMania 34 that Rusev was unhappy about how the company was using him, and that he may have asked for his release. According to those rumors, his request for release was the reason he was added to the United States Championship match at WrestleMania. But who even knows? The point is, pretty much everyone agrees that Rusev removing mentions of WWE from his profiles was all storyline.
And now the match is back on. But one person thinks he knows why Rusev was briefly pulled from that match. Taz(z) talked about the situation on The Taz Show, and thinks Rusev’s “Bury me softly, brother” tweet might have been too cute or just a shade too far over the line in WWE’s eyes. (Transcript via Wrestling Inc.)
“I was surprised that Rusev tweeted this because he’s worked there long enough. I’m not surprised if — maybe, this is just me speculating — just maybe it’s a situation where WWE got ticked off by his tweet. Basically saying, ‘Well, what is that?’ Basically stooging off that you’re gonna lose the match. You’re basically saying, you know, bury me softly, it’s a Casket Match, so you’re basically saying that you’re doing the job.
“I can see [WWE] getting ticked off from that. Yeah, I mean, everybody and their mother probably knows that no one’s beating The Undertaker right now, and that’s no disrespect to Rusev, but you know it’s just not gonna happen. But still I got a funny feeling that [the tweet] might have ticked them off.”
It’s not a terrible theory! And there’s still no telling whether this Rusev/Undertaker match will still actually go down as currently advertised, or perhaps maybe WWE feels having Rusev lose a very short casket match in lopsided fashion is in fact the best punishment for his supposed transgression. All we know is, we should enjoy every Rusev Day to the fullest, while they last.
