Aiden English On How Rusev Day Came About, Says They Fought To Keep From Splitting Up

Talking with Inside the Ropes, Matthew Rehwoldt — the former Aiden English — discussed how Rusev Day came about as well as how it ended. English and Rusev allied in September of 2017 after English’s former partner Simon Gotch had left the company, and stayed as a team until July the next year when Lana became the focal point of a feud between them. During that time, the duo became very popular and Rehwoldt talked about how the team up came about and how they were all opposed to the idea of it coming to an end. Highlights and the full video are below:

On how Rusev Day came about: “[I had] a couple random television matches with Randy Orton, which I wish they would have had more time and stuff like that. But that was incredible, Randy is the best. And that’s actually how — by pure circumstance, I end up in a match with him while he’s kind of starting this thing with Rusev. And so it was really coincidental and I don’t think meant to become anything. I was just there as, since I was literally already there, caused some kind of distraction which helped Rusev. And then the next week, we had that big ceremony where I sung the Bulgarian National Anthem for the first official Rusev Day.

“And I think — as far as I know, that was literally all it was supposed to be, this kind of crazy ceremony. Randy interferes, drop, boom. Him and Rusev carry on and that was it, and I was back to whatever I was doing. But it got such a good response both in the arena and social and everything that they’re like, ‘Well, let’s do something next week. Get the tux back and we’ll do something else.’ And then it was like a backstage [segment], and then they were like, ‘Okay well, let’s do something else.’ And all of a sudden it was like, ‘Alright well, now you’re going to come with him on live events.’ And then it just went from there. And I remember by Survivor Series, two months later, there were people in every building chanting Rusev Day, and the rest is literally history. It was so organic, man.”

On his angle with Lana that broke up Rusev Day: “So it was starting to come from Creative, just about looking for ways to try and get away from [it]. OneLana had come back into the picture; I mean, she’d come back on Smackdown or whatever it was. So they were trying to find ways to incorporate her. And so like, that’s such an obvious thing creatively. ‘Oh, introduce someone else and it causes friction.’ And so it’s funny, when she first came in I think everyone was like, ‘Alright, well here is where we’re going to start building to it.’ So I was kind of like, ‘Alright.’ I knew this would happen at some point, I mean we were all hoping it would last longer. But then it’s funny — so it was pretty much where I’m like, ‘Alright, two or three weeks time, goodbye,’ but then they kind of kept it and that Mixed Match Challenge stuff kind of happened and we kind of got to do things together. Even me and Lana got to do things together. And so I was like, ‘Alright, I’ll bite. Maybe the three of us can make the family bigger,’ so to speak, right?.

“So we did that, but then eventually, sometimes they just want to go in different directions so bad. We argued and kind of pitched our point, we wanted to really kind of keep it running as long as we could. But at the end of the day the powers that be are the powers that be, and they saw different things for Rusev and different things for me, so time to go in that direction. It is not the way I would have had us split, but sometimes you just – you make your fight, you make your argument, you make your pitch. But at the end of the day you do what you’re told.”

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