Rusev Recalls Morbid Reason WWE "Higher Up" Gave For Turning Down Proposed Kurt Angle Match
Miro, formerly known as Rusev in WWE, recently went live on his YouTube channel and responded to the recent news of Kurt Angle revealing one of the reasons he had returned to WWE was the opportunity to work with Rusev. Miro went on to say that he pitched the idea to bring back Angle so they could work together, but revealed that WWE shot it down.
"I wanted to wrestle him," Miro said. "The first year I was with WWE, I pitched for Kurt Angle to come back. That was before the John Cena situation. I think it was before, but anyways, I wanted to bring back Kurt. The Swagger thing happened at SummerSlam and I started thinking about what I could build towards for 'Mania. Nobody told me that I was going to work John for 'Mania. I wanted to wrestle Kurt.
"I talked to two people," Miro continued. "I'm not going to say who they are, but I talked to two people and they are really high up there. I said, 'How about we bring back Kurt? It's going to be great. One, he's the greatest professional wrestler ever. Two, it's USA coming back and I'm doing the Russian thing.' Kurt would have been the perfect person, but they told me no. This is verbatim from the person that told me. He said, 'We don't want to feel responsible if he comes back and dies.' That's from the person that told me. There were two people there. If one says I'm lying, hopefully the other will stand up and say it's true. In the end, he got that match with Corbin, but I always wanted to wrestle Kurt."
Miro went on to discuss Kurt Angle a bit more, revealing Angle is his favorite wrestler and even more so now that Angle has decided to adopt a child from Bulgaria.
"He's my favorite wrestler ever," Miro added. "It would have been the best to get to work with him. It would have been perfect. I even DM'd him back then before I knew him. I sent him a message on Twitter just telling him I wanted to work with him. We ended up talking back and forth for a bit about it.
"I love Kurt. He adopted a 14-year old boy from Bulgaria. I loved him before that, but after doing that and blessing that child, he's just the best. We don't have money for all these things over there, so for him to go adopt a kid from there and bring him to the states and bless him, I am always going to be grateful towards him for that."
If you use any of the quotes from this article, please credit Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.