During their time with WWE, the company booked multiple angles for real life couple CJ Perry (fka Lana) and Miro (Rusev) where she was involved with another man. These sparked all sorts of speculation about why creative would go in that direction, especially after Perry confirmed she got in trouble when photos of Miro proposing hit TMZ during the initial angle where she was paired with Dolph Ziggler.
The behind-the-scenes story she shared on The Sessions with Renee Paquette from the program with Ziggler won’t do anything to tamp down rumors about WWE — and specifically Vince McMahon’s — motivation for those booking decisions:
“The crazy thing with Dolph that was super awkward was that we actually had the practice the kiss in front of Vince and Miro. So the funny thing is, Summer [Rae] was telling the story of how she had the practice kissing Dolph in front of Vince. I was like, ‘What? You had to practice in front of Vince? Yeah, right.’ She’s like, ‘Be ready. You might need to do the same at some point.’ I’m like, ‘Oh my God. Okay.’
“A week later, we got called in. It’s Ace [John Laurinaitis], Vince, Dolph, and Miro. We had to practice the kiss and Miro is turning red in the corner. Vince is like, ‘What? We’re all adults. What’s the problem? We’re all adults. It’s professionalism. Don’t be weird.’
“So we do it, and Vince goes, ‘No, no, no, no, way slower.’ He doesn’t fully kiss Johnny Ace, but he gets like this close. I mean, it was hilarious. Dolph is dying. That’s why we went so slow in that segment. I recently watched it with one of my friends, and I was like, ‘This is so slow’, but everyone was like, ‘You look so innocent like you’ve never done it before’, and that’s what Vince was going for. He wanted it to be innocent like she had never kissed anyone before.’
“It was very weird.”
Performers practicing something they’ll have to do on-screen isn’t weird. Asking Miro to be there when he’s uncomfortable with it? That’s weird.
And I won’t even go into the other things we’ve heard recently about McMahon and Laurinaitis that also make this even more uncomfortable and weird.
Listen to the rest of Renee and CJ’s talk here, and h/t WrestlingNews.co for the quote.
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