Aiden English On Who First Said “Happy Rusev Day,” Vince McMahon Telling Rusev Fans Were Mocking Him

Matt Rehwoldt (formerly WWE’s Aiden English) shares how the phrase “Happy Rusev Day” first came about.

Speaking to Warren Hayes, Rehwoldt spoke on the origin of “Happy Rusev Day” and admitted that it was Randy Orton who first said that specific phrase in an interview, which then led to it being a popular chant among fans at WWE shows during Rusev’s time with the company.

“If I remember correctly, the ceremony, the segment wasn’t called, like, ‘Rusev Day Segment.’ The mayor said ‘We’re going to call today Rusev Day’ kind of a throwaway line. And then backstage, Randy [Orton] goes, to like a backstage interviewer, ‘Hey, Happy Rusev Day, ha ha ha’ and walks away. And that was kind of the first Happy Rusev Day was Randy saying it in an interview. And then after that you’d hear small chants at the TV or on house shows. And it just kept growing and growing and people just wouldn’t stop,” Rehwoldt said.

Rehwoldt also spoke about recent comments from Rusev in which he said Vince McMahon would tell Rusev that fans were mocking him when they were chanting “Rusev Day!” Rehwoldt doesn’t doubt how wild McMahon can think sometimes and said it could very well be McMahon actually believing that fans were mocking Rusev or simply McMahon wanting to fire Rusev up.

“I was getting this from Miro who spoke to Vince directly. But yeah, to be fair, sometimes… I can see… the mind that is Vince McMahon is a very wild place. And so it literally could just be point face, what it was, or he could have been saying that to try to get Miro, like angry, and like yeah, fire him up. I wouldn’t put it past him. But there would always seem to be this hesitation behind really pulling the trigger on anything major with us, anyway, so I do take as that’s kind of the way it was seen by the boss. So yeah, it was, it was like, what else do we have to do to kind of show people are into this. They were trying to push him [Miro/Rusev] as a really strong heel, so I get the urge to be like ‘No, let’s not immediately jump into like everybody loves him,’ I get it. You don’t want to jump into anything too fast. But it kept going. If it’s ironic, people will throw it away in a week or two. They get over that stuff. But when they’re really loving something they stick with it and they did stick with it and stuck with it and stuck with it and stuck,” Rehwoldt said.

You can check out the full interview in the video at the top of the page. Credit to Warren Hayes for the transcription.