Rusev gives plenty of high praise to John Cena.
Cena was one of Rusev’s first high-profile feuds when he moved to Raw and SmackDown after a brief time in NXT, with the two having multiple matches for the United States Championship, including one at WrestleMania.
Rusev spoke about working with Cena years ago when he was in WWE in a video posted on his YouTube channel. The former United States Champion said he was grateful for the chance to do so, especially at a relatively early stage of his WWE career.
“Cena’s mentality, Cena’s psychology is so freaking good because he knows what the deal is and he just knows and he gets it... Cena knows so much, Cena knows more than anyone in the current business and in the past few years. He just knows. I was just so blessed to be with him for so many years. We worked so many matches in so many live events and everything. That’s where I think I excelled the most,” Rusev said.
But Rusev’s first few years in WWE wasn’t entirely focused on Cena. Rusev worked with a number of wrestlers, some of which are either current and future Hall of Famers. Rusev said he took something from the different people that he’s worked with, including Cena.
“I was very fortunate [in those first years] to work with so many legends like Mark Henry, Big Show, with [Jack] Swagger, all these guys, fantastic Hall of Famers, Zack [Ryder too]. I learned so much from everyone. I knew what I was doing but it was so great learning from them. You learn something from every single person you work with. With Show, it’s some maneuvers and now you know how to work with a big guy. Once you come to Cena, Cena is just, ‘See you out there’ and you go out there and you have a match with Cena in front of 10-15,000 people. You learn and you just listen to the people,” Rusev said.
Rusev has previously given high praise to some of the other wrestlers that were in WWE while he was there, including Chris Jericho and Asuka. The video can be seen at the top of the page.
