Rusev Throws Shade at WWE for Bringing Back Shane McMahon

Former WWE star Rusev, now going by Miro, couldn’t help but poke fun at the WWE when he saw their latest announcement. For those who missed it, WWE announced early Monday afternoon that Shane McMahon would be making his return to WWE television on tonight’s Raw after being written off last October. The former United States Champion found it ironic that WWE was bringing back a 50-year-old pseudo wrestler weeks after declaring they needed to build new stars to help improve television ratings.

News broke later in the day (and was confirmed by WWE.com) that a new faction would also be debuting during tonight’s episode. According to @WrestleVotes, McMahon will be directly involved in that angle.

“Sure, I mean you want to continue to build stars no matter what time. It is so, as Paul [Triple H] just mentioned about NXT talent,” Vince McMahon said during the recent Annual Shareholder’s Meeting. “He has done an extraordinary job of creating new stars, and as they continue to evolve, they’ll continue to come up to Raw and Smackdown. So there’s this influence of new superstars coming into both Raw and Smackdown, and in addition to that, the ways that we now promote talent in a more effective way, [with] digital and social media, as opposed to the normal way. We do not have a live audience and of course that to us is paramount. They’re like the third performer in the ring, in terms of our interaction with our audience. So nonetheless it is a good time to continue with the digital and social imprint and this land grab that we have, which is substantial. We continue that, and again new stars coming up.”

The WWE Chairman also confidently stated WWE would get its ratings for Raw and SmackDown back up.

We have a 30-plus year track record of creating compelling characters and engaging a variety of audiences, and we obviously remain confident we can continue that with our collective ability, even in the most challenging environments with no live audience,” McMahon said. “The media echo system obviously has changed. We change with it. Our engagement metrics across platforms are understandably and obviously — however, the importance of linear programming is paramount in all of our businesses — we consistently have seen year-over-year increases in a variety of digital metrics and engagement. And positive trends have continued, even during COVID.”

“Conversely, TV viewership trends have been negatively impacted by COVID, obviously, and the lack of a live audience,” he continued. “We are still nonetheless the number-one television show on USA [Network] and consistently the number-one broadcast show on Fridays among key demos. We expect a combination of valuable promotional inventory from our TV partners with the return of sports events programming.”