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Just days ago, WWE announced Rusev would be wrestling Undertaker in a Casket match at the upcoming Greatest Royal Rumble event on April 27 in Saudi Arabia. This was quite the surprise for a number of reasons, not least of which the fact that Undertaker had just beat John Cena in under three minutes at WrestleMania 34 while Rusev lost his bid to win the U.S. title in a Fatal 4-Way.
The “Bulgarian Brute’s” response to this was both to outright tell “The Deadman” to “bury me softly, brother” and give an interview to TMZ alongside his wife that seemed to upset ‘Taker’s wife, Michelle McCool.
After all this, WWE came out and revealed Rusev was out of the match and replaced by Chris Jericho. They gave no explanation for the change, so when Rusev completely scrubbed WWE from his social media accounts, fans, naturally, assumed the worst.
The good news comes by way of Jimmy Traina of SI:
Wrestling fans, I asked the WWE if Rusev has left the company. WWE said those rumors are not true, he is still with the company and he will be in the Royal Rumble match at Greatest Royal Rumble in Saudi Arabia. #RusevDay
— Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) April 13, 2018
All the Rusev stuff is storyline.
As for what the storyline is, well, that’s hard to say. Again, WWE didn’t offer up a storyline explanation for Jericho replacing Rusev, and the Greatest Royal Rumble seems to be a mix of an in-storyline supershow and stand alone event.
Perhaps we’ll learn more in the coming weeks. For now, we can rest easy knowing Rusev isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.