Pro Wrestling Real Life Stories: Episode 3 - Lana, Rusev, his real-life fight, Russia, Bulgaria and the American Dream

#3 Tong Po and Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tong Po served as inspiration for Rusev's early character work

Rusev made an interesting revelation about the origins of his WWE character, to Chris Jericho--something which harkened back to Rusev's study of Tong Po and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Anecdotes:

While Dusty Rhodes bestowed several gimmicks on Rusev--including the dreaded genie act--one fine day, The Bulgarian Brute chose to go out there and do what he really wanted. Rusev explained that he tried to act as though he were Tong Po--the iconic villainous character from the movie Kickboxer.

Although Dusty Rhodes seemed to be somewhat impressed with Rusev's work at the time, the former continued experimenting with new gimmicks for Rusev--a rather memorable one being a character that saw Rusev copying legendary bodybuilder and Hollywood action movie icon Arnold Schwarzenegger...Hilariously, Rusev and Jericho laughed to no end, as the former explained Dusty's instructions to him on the Arnold gimmick.

Rusev continued that his job was to wear a leather jacket like Arnold, speak little-to-no-English, and just "act confused (sic)"...