Rhino recently appeared on Talk Is Jericho, where he discussed several topics, ranging from his last run with WWE and keeping his name. Here are some highlights.
On his last run with WWE:
Rhino: “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.
“So I realized my mistakes and the run there, I enjoyed it because I was working with Slater and he’s just a funny guy. So that was all enjoyable but there’s a few things I wish I would have done differently to make it more of a successful run as far as being, whether on TV more, maybe helping the guys more, men and women out behind the scenes but I think I did influence quite a few people there in a positive light.”
On how he’s been able to keep his name:
Rhino: “They wanted to change my name to Mary. WWE, they were like, ‘We gotta change your name. I go, ‘Why?’ They go, ‘We can’t patent it.’ I got this from Joe Legend, he goes, ‘Why don’t they just change it to a Y?’ And I go, ‘Well, I’ll pitch that.’ They go, ‘Oh no, we tried that, we can’t,’ or ‘We’ll try, we can’t.’ I think they just wanted to create their own character with me.
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.'”
On working with Paul Heyman:
Rhino: “Oh, it was great. He knew I never did promos and stuff like that so he put me with Corino and Tajiri and Jack Victory and then Corino was a mouthpiece. And then he let me chime in here or there and then the more comfortable I became, that’s when he allowed me to speak more, and then he put me with Don Callis. It was cool because I watched him do it with a lot of people. He would let them work on the live events, try to figure it out, see what he needed to hide, see what he could highlight, and then he would start putting them on TV.”
The full episode is available here:
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