WWE WrestleMania 34: Is There A Spot For Rusev On The Main Card?
By Dalton Quix
Will WWE WrestleMania 34 be known as Rusev Day? Or will The Bulgarian Brute be relegated to the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal?
Despite being over with WWE crowds for past year or so, Rusev continues to be underutilized. However, Rusev has recently found his stride by pairing with Aiden English and establishing the new Bulgarian holiday Rusev Day.
Now, Rusev and his partner are the most over act on SmackDown Live. It seems that ever crowd is pro Rusev despite the fact that he is still being booked as a heel, and Rusev Day chants are heard during matches he isn’t involved with and have even travelled their way to Raw.
His Rusev Day shirts and calendars have been top sellers for WWE.com, Rusev’s personality is infectious, and the Super athlete has never been a slouch in the ring, too. So, it looks like Rusev is the total package with the people’s support behind him, so why is he not being featured more prominently on the Road to WWE WrestleMania 34?
Credit: WWE Universe on Twitter
Well, the truth is that WrestleMania plans are often made months in advance, and the WWE creative team was probably not prepared for Rusev to capture the audience and maintain that momentum all the way through WrestleMania season.
So, if we’re being realistic here, it will be hard to find a main card match for Rusev at this year’s WrestleMania. There were ten matches on the main card last year, and if WWE is keeping ‘Mania the same length, then there will likely be the same amount of matches.
Assuming SmackDown Live will host 5 of those matches, we will likely see Styles vs. Nakamura for the WWE Championship, Roode vs. Orton and/or Jinder for the US Championship, and The Usos will defend their titles against a top tag team like The New Day or Bludgeon Brothers or the dastardly duo of Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn. Then, we’d have the SmackDown Women’s Championship defended at the event, too.
If Kevin and Sami aren’t competing for the tag titles, they would probably feud against each other at WrestleMania. AND, we still have to have our traditional Shane McMahon match while fitting in top players like Baron Corbin and Dolph Ziggler.
So, unless Rusev is involved in some kind of multi-man match for the United States Championship or the SmackDown Tag Team Championships alongside his partner Aiden English (or shocks us all with a match against Shane O’Mac), it’s incredibly unlikely that Rusev will be a featured player at WrestleMania 34.
From the looks of how things will be shaping up, Rusev will probably just be apart of the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal. However, I’m sure a big win for the Bulgarian Brute in that match would surely generate a huge pop from the undoubtedly pro Rusev Day crowd.
Rusev may be the people’s champion of WWE at the moment, but sadly that isn’t enough for a big WrestleMania push unless your name is Daniel Bryan. Just ask Cesaro, CM Punk, Dolph Ziggler, Dean Ambrose, and countless others that never got that big WrestleMania match the people felt they deserve.
Next: WrestleMania: It's Braun Strowman's Time
It’s not all sad news, though. At least WrestleMania just so happens to fall on Rusev Day this year!.