Dusty Rhodes Tried to Give Rusev a Very Unfortunate Gimmick

Dusty Rhodes is a legend in the wrestling world, and an icon both in and out of the ring–but that doesn’t mean every idea the American Dream had was a golden one.

Rusev was on the receiving end of one of those less than stellar ideas during his days in NXT. That’s according to an interview with Y2J on the Talk Is Jericho podcast (transcription via WrestlingInc) where Rusev discussed the early part of the career.

“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.”

We’re certainly glad that didn’t last long. Rusev also discussed his early days in the US before his WWE tryout, where he worked odd jobs in an effort to make ends meet as an exchange student. His first job was painting houses, but he lost the job a month later–along with his home. “They threw me out,” he said. “I had no money. I had nowhere to go. They kicked me out of the house they provided.”

If you can imagine it, the Bulgarian Brute was set to work at a fast food establishment.

“I worked at Wendy’s for a week. No, you just work at Wendy’s, right? Three guys there worked and there were seven managers. How is that even [possible]? It’s so American. We need more workers than managers.” Rusev mused, “‘you need to put mustard with a W on top of the burger.’ I’m like, ‘what? First of all, who’s going to open the burger and see the W. And, if you turn it upside-down, it’s McDonald’s!'” And the manager goes, ‘oh, I never really thought about it.'”