Miro Recalls WWE HOFer Pairing Him Up With Lana

During the latest episode of The Kurt Angle Show, Miro made a guest appearance to talk about his time with WWE in NXT and how his partnership with his wife Lana, aka CJ Perry, came about. The AEW superstar detailed whose idea it was to put the two of them together and what idea inspired the pairing of the two.

"American Dream, baby, Dusty Rhodes," Miro said. "He was so smart, man, Dusty was so brilliant. CJ, my wife, Lana, she just got signed in May or something and we got to meet then, then it was not until two weeks later that Dusty found out she could speak perfect English and perfect Russian. They knew they had me and I knew they were already looking at me because I had this dark match with Dolph Ziggler that Triple H was there and got to see. And he asked who I am and then from then on, we rode that gravy train.

"Then CJ came in, we started doing promos together but once again, when you're in developmental, you just want to do funny stuff because everybody laughs. Then one day we were told, 'Hey guys, you should try something serious,' and we did, we did try something serious and got the inspiration from Rocky 4, Drago and Mila. We rode with that, Triple H loved it, and everything from there was like 'Yeah, yeah, soon you're going to debut,' and everything started going. Once the company has something behind you, it's very easy to go up, the problem is when they don't."

Since moving to AEW from WWE, Miro has talked about being called a "WWE guy" in which he responded, "God made me, not Vince McMahon." Unfortunately for the former TNT Champion, he is dealing with an injury that's kept him out of action in the ring since his last match in November at Full Gear against Bryan Danielson.

Continuing to speak about the beginning of his journey in WWE, Miro spoke about his time in NXT and how the country of Bulgaria had issues with the way he presented himself. The former United States Champion also spoke about Vince McMahon not wanting to keep him and Lana together, which led to Triple H speaking up and making sure the two stuck together on the main roster.

"They even had an issue when I was in NXT waving the Bulgarian flag," Rusev said. "We had nothing and for the music, we decided to go with the Bulgarian national anthem which I thought it was great. Once you get the heat, you're the heel and Bulgaria right away 'Why is he using the Bulgarian National Anthem, blah blah blah.' I don't even know why they had a problem with it, to be honest but we had to stick with it. Then we went to the main roster, debuted at the Rumble, which I wasn't even sure it was going to happen.

"Then the next day it was — was Lana going to debut? That was an issue we had with Vince, Vince always loves his big monsters by themselves and he thinks the women take away from the heat. But thank you to Triple H, he fought for it and believed in me and Lana as a unit, as a package, and thankfully too that we debuted on SmackDown and started to do the vignettes with CJ which I thought it was absolutely the better choice. I don't think Rusev by himself is over as without Lana being there."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit The Kurt Angle Show with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.