Remember This Guy #1

Welcome to a new series where I look at forgotten WWE Superstars from recent history and recall their time in WWE and have a quick look at where they are now.

Today, we start off with Vladimir Kozlov (Oleg Prudius), who in his WWE career won the Tag Team Championships with Santino Marella and at one point defeated the Undertaker. Those, unfortunately, are the only accolades of his WWE career, in which like most big men start off with them being a menace and end up being a joke.

Kozlov made his debut on the 4th of April 2008 and with no entrance music or Titantron had a peculiar look about him. This instantly grabbed the attention of fans which was the start of his push.

After competing in a few squash matches here and there Kozlov attacked Jeff Hardy and eventually Triple H who at the time was WWE champion. Kozlov defeated The Undertaker via disqualification to qualify for a match against the champion. A match which should’ve been Hardy vs Kozlov vs HHH for the championship turned into Kozlov vs HHH with Edge coming in late to make it a triple threat match in which he won after Jeff Hardy failed to take out the man who replaced him.

After a match with Matt Hardy and a standard Royal Rumble match performance, Kozlov had a stint with ECW. A stint where he was in a forgettable faction with William Regal and Ezekiel Jackson, where he and Jackson attempted to help Regal defeat Christian for the ECW Championship, yet even with their help, Regal wasn’t able to become Champion.

Following this ECW was replaced with NXT so Kozlov moved to Raw where his career started to really to dwindle even though he won the Tag Team Championship with Santino Marella. They started their title hunt at Night of Champions 2010 in a Tag Team Turmoil match where they were eliminated by The Usos. However, on a Raw episode, Marella and Kozlov defeated The Usos to become the number one contenders for the titles where they lost against Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater at Survivor Series. But on their third attempt in a fatal 4 way, Kozlov and Marella won the belts.

At Elimination Chamber they dropped the belts to Gabriel and Slater and that brings the end to Kozlov’s WWE career.

So, where is he now? Oleg has participated in the film such as Wolf Warrior 2 and has done a full-body transformation and looks like he spends most of his time in the gym.