Lana reveals why WWE recently left her "crying" and "shocked"

Lana is one of the most recognizable faces of the PG era of WWE. The 40-year-old signed a legends contract with the promotion in April this year. Now, CJ Perry has come forward to reveal the aftermath of this deal and why it left her shocked and in tears.

Perry made an appearance on Chris Van Vliet’s podcast and talked about her Legends contract. She said the news split the WWE Universe in two, with one half hating her and the other supporting her.

The Ravishing Russian said she understands where the hate comes from, since her character, Lana, is nowhere near the level of legends like The Macho Man Randy Savage. Moreover, she revealed that receiving the contract was a shock to her, but receiving the honor made her cry.

“I’m still processing it. It’s funny because I would say it’s been kind of controversial. One of the biggest things that I had on my podcast last week was announcing that I’m a WWE legend, and you thought I stole their Christmas presents or something, people were so mad. People were like, it’s a stretch, and they’re fighting, and then other fans are coming in and defending me. So I just want to acknowledge I understand, I was that shocked too. I absolutely understand that there’s a huge difference between the character Lana and Randy Savage on the legend scale. I get it, but this is what WWE calls their contracts, being a full WWE superstar. My agent called me. I was crying. I was shocked. Yeah, they gave Miro a contract, and they gave me the WWE legend contract at the same time."

Lana is the former manager of Rusev, who also returned to WWE in April. The duo gained a lot of popularity with the fans during their initial run, and The Bulgarian Brute also won the United States Championship three times with Perry by his side.

---

CJ Perry reveals how the character of Lana was formed in WWE

Lana was a natural at generating heat each time she took the mic to talk about the greatness of her motherland. She was the mouthpiece for Rusev for the most part and also cut promos alongside John Cena. Speaking to CVV in the same podcast episode, CJ Perry mentioned the work she put into developing her character.

“So Lana in NXT would come to promo class with Dusty Rhodes with at least five different characters and promos, not even kidding, with boards of storylines. I don’t know if you ever saw GLOW, when I watched it, I was like, I think she took my real life story, because that’s what I was doing. And Dusty loved it. Because I don’t know about everyone else, everyone else was like, You’re doing the most. But was just working hard, and Dusty loved it. He’s like, you’re going to have a very long career in this business. Because I was always like, Oh, you don’t like this idea. What about these other five? And so me and Rusev started working,” she said.

Rusev was competing for the Intercontinental Championship against Dominik Mysterio in the last few weeks. He was also part of the Last Time is Now Tournament before losing to Jey Uso on SmackDown this week. It would be interesting to see if Lana will work as his manager once again.