There have been several rumors circulating about Finn Balor’s return. Although he hasn’t been cleared for in-ring action, it is apparent he is on his way. We were sitting on pins and needles while we watched Raw because we were praying for Balor to come out and save the lackluster Fastlane go-home show. However he didn’t emerge.
Related: Finn Balor Comments On His NXT Return, Update On Finn’s WrestleMania Status
Dave Meltzer recently commented on Twitter about Balor’s expected return and noted it could happen any day now. This might be contingent on Finn’s inevitable medical clearance, but it is certainly a good sign we could be seeing the Demon soon.
This gives us a new reason to be excited about Fastlane. We’re crossing our fingers he does a run-in during the Owens/Goldberg match for the Universal Title, but that is wishful thinking of course.
He's back any day now. https://t.co/0GNpYmAaYy
— Dave Meltzer (@davemeltzerWON) February 28, 2017
Rusev recently appeared on Chris Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho podcast where he discussed many topics from his first experiences in America including getting fired from his painting job, to working at Wendy’s and more. He went into his time training with Rikishi and he also spoke about his current life and career goals.
One of the best parts of the podcast came when he spoke about a man who influenced not only the Bulgarian Brute, but the entire professional wrestling world, The American Dream Dusty Rhodes.
According to Rusev, Dusty Rhodes had several ideas for his character when he was in developmental, but unfortunately not all of those ideas were good (via Wrestling Inc).
“He has given me so many good and bad ideas that you have no idea! He tried to make me a genie. ‘Baby, I see you with that new gear. You look like a genie! I want you to work with that Russian chick, Anya, and she’s going to, baby, rub the lamp and you’re going to – pop – appear!'” Rusev continued, “he made me do genie promos for the next three weeks. Well, he had the lamp and this kickboxing chick we had back in FCW, she rubbed the lamp and I appeared.”
Just imagine how different handsome Rusev’s career would’ve been if they had paired him with anyone except for the Ravishing Russian Lana. Although she might have needed to fake her Russian accent, her character greatly transcended her initial emergence onto the WWE landscape. It’s hard to think of Ru-Ru as anything except for the Bulgarian Brute, especially a genie.
The American Dream still gets an A for effort on that one.
