Rhino Talks About His Last WWE Run, Keeping His Name

Former WWE Superstar Rhino was a recent guest on Chris Jericho’s podcast, Talk Is Jericho. During the course of their conversation, Rhino addressed his final run with WWE and how he managed to keep his wrestling name upon leaving the promotion.

“My last run in WWE was for three years, a three-year contract, and I’m thinking, ‘Okay, well wh wasn’t it more successful?’ When I was going in, I didn’t go in with enough steam. So anyways I’m like, ‘Well, okay, what was wrong, what did I do wrong?’ And I think what it was is I was working so hard on the campaign, not just on knocking on doors, you have to file with the campaign finance committee and all that stuff, so there’s a lot of detailed work trying t get your message there and all that stuff, and then getting ready for one opponent and the next round.”

He reflected on the mistakes of his final run with WWE before noting that he still enjoyed it as he got to work with Heath Slater. Rhino stated that despite this, he wished he could have had a more successful experience. For him, that doesn’t necessarily translate to being on TV more as he mentioned coaching others and working more behind the scenes.

Turning his attention to how he managed to keep the ring name ‘Rhino,’ the former Superstar recalled the different names WWE once tried to pitch him, including “Mary.”

“They were kicking around different ideas, Juggernaut was one. The worst one Edge said was Mary and he goes, ‘Yeah, he kept the best one and the worst one.’ They didn’t have me sign R-h-y-n-o over to them but when they re-signed me, I think it was 2002, they re-signed me a year early, and they had in there signing over r-h-i-n-o and r-h-y-n-o. And I said I’ll sign over r-h-y-n-o because you guys did the homework and all that stuff but I’m not signing over the one with an ‘i’ and they go, ‘Okay, no problem.'”