Lana On Why Vince McMahon Ended Rusev Day Run, Enjoyed Storyline With Nia Jax

CJ Perry, the former Lana, weighed in on a couple of topics from her WWE run including the sudden end of the babyface “Rusev Day” run for Miro and her own storyline with Nia Jax. Perry was a guest on In The Kliq recently and talked about hoe Rusev’s babyface run was cut short because Vince McMahon preferred Rusev as a heel, as well as why she enjoyed the storyline that say Jax putting her through tables weekly. You can see some highlights below:

On whether Rusev Day ended too soon: “I feel that Vince had an idea of how he wanted — the simplest way of putting it for all the listeners that might not be as familiar with wrestling is Vince McMahon was the director, the Steven Spielberg of our show. And just like any television show, or movies, there’s casting. And it kind of comes down to the exec of the network, to the showrunner. And if they see you — if they want to cast you as a villain, you know, that’s their choice. And I think at the end of the day, Vince loved Miro as a villain. And so that was really the bottom line of the struggle is that, he wanted him to be his ‘Bulgarian Brute 300 pound crazy villain!’. I mean, it was his company, still is so, and that was his creative vision. And I think that was always the conflict of it.”

On getting up through tables by Nia Jax: “Ironically, I really enjoyed it. I mean yeah, it definitely hurt. You’re going through a commentary table, which is much thicker than a normal table. And you know, a beautiful Samoan Dragon is dropping you and landing on you, so there’s nothing that doesn’t hurt about it. But I mean that’s why I wrestled, like it’s not — it is painful. But I love it there’s nothing like it in the world. And it just happened to be that you know Miro did a podcast that day, and it released that morning. And he was asked for a question of like, ‘Do you think CJ will get punished for you and what you’re saying in AEW about the company?’ And that night I started going through tables. It just was coincidence.

“And then the fans, this is why I love our fans! They just like had my back. They were like, ‘Screw WWE for punishing Lana!’ And so they decided to run with it, they’re like, ‘Whoa, she’s I think we can get her over as a babyface now.’ And that was never originally the intention, but they just kept on going with it and running with it. So I was like, ‘Cool, there’s a story here. Nia and I had great chemistry and was it very much a David/Goliath story. And I think people understand it, people understand that type of story.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit In the Kliq with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.