WWE wanted to give Rusev erectile dysfunction

 

By Cain A. Knight | SBNation

 

Before Rusev was released by WWE and joined AEW as Miro, he came out on the losing end of a wacky love triangle storyline with Lana and Bobby Lashley. In kayfabe, Lana had an affair with Lashley, divorced Rusev, married her new lover, and then it became a love quadrilateral thanks to Liv Morgan. Lashley went on to defeat Rusev in their lone pay-per-view match at TLC 2019.

Miro was interviewed on this week’s AEW Unrestricted podcast, where he said the original plan for that storyline actually involved erectile dysfunction:

“They wanted [Lana] to say that I’m a sex addict. But the original pitch was that I have erectile dysfunction. They really wanted to kill me like completely...there’s absolutely no coming back from it. I told him, Vince, this is gonna bury me completely. You already have the man that took my wife, and now I have [erectile] dysfunction, and then I’m gonna lose...I just told him, no.”

“Thank God I did not have erectile dysfunction as a character.”

He made sure to clarify that there’s nothing wrong with having erectile dysfunction, but it never would have worked for a babyface in WWE given the way that they intended to present it.

Miro also talked about how difficult it is to express unhappiness through the proper channels in WWE, because everything gets leaked to the internet. He offered one example from a couple years ago:

“I was really unhappy. I didn’t make a big fuss. Once again the stooges find out that I wanted to leave. Because there was only one person I went [to]. I said, ‘Mark I want to leave.’ He’s like, ‘Ok...we can make it happen.’ That was maybe two or three years ago, whenever it was. Of course nothing happened, but the internet finds out about it the same day.”

“You can’t go nowhere to complain. Once you go to complain somewhere it leaks right out. So who do you go to tell? If you’re unhappy, who do you go and tell? Because you can’t get a meeting with the big boss, it’s just impossible. You go to whoever you’re supposed to, it leaks right to the dirt sheets...Where do I complain? People have mental breakdowns, there’s nowhere to complain. It blows my mind.”

WWE often sounds like a very stressful place to work at, and Rusev’s reference to slimy backstage machinations and mental health considerations only reinforces that notion.

If you want to hear Miro unload more of his thoughts on topics ranging from video games to the League of Nations, be sure to check out the AEW Unrestricted podcast here.

Are you surprised to hear that WWE wanted to give Rusev erectile dysfunction?