During a recent edition of Chris Jericho’s “Talk is Jericho” podcast, Rhyno commented on wanting to change his name in WWE to “Mary”, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On WWE wanting to change his name to Mary when he first signed with them: “They wanted to change my name to Mary. Yeah, at WWE, well this was after ECW, and you know, I had a good little run there, and then they were like, ‘Oh, we gotta change your name,’ right, I go, ‘Why?’ They go, ‘We can’t patent it.’ I go, well, actually I got this from Joe Legend, he goes, ‘Why don’t they just change it to a Y,’ right? And I go, well I’ll pitch that. They go, ‘Oh, no, we tried that, we can’t,’ or ‘We’ll try it, we can’t.’ I think they just wanted to create their own character with me. So Adam, Edge, he’s like, you guys are really going to drop the ball, bring him in as a friend, and our heater, and all that stuff, they wanted to dye my hair blond, and then make me their little brother, and they’re like, he looks nothing like us, we’re tall and lanky and he’s short and stocky. And they go, could you imagine having to dye your hair blond all the time? Especially having dark hair. And then they’re like, they finally said, they were kicking around different ideas, Juggernaut was one, the worst one, Edge said, was Mary, and he goes, ‘Yeah, they kept the best one and the worst one.’ And yeah, I don’t know where it came from.”
On WWE deciding to bring him in as a friend of Edge and Christian’s named Rhyno: “That’s what they ended up running with. Edge was like, you’re going to insult the fan’s intelligence. They’ve seen him for the last two and a half years tearing people up in a different promotion. So they ended up, I think, we’re in New York somewhere upstate, and they go you’re starting tonight, I go, ‘Did they figure out a name,’ they go, ‘Rhyno with a Y,’ I go, ‘OK.’”
On WWE wanting to sign over the rights to Rhino and Rhyno: “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, well, 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 the I. And they go, ‘Ok, no problem.’ I go can we do a little signing bonus too? They go, ‘Yeah, no problem.’ I’m like, shit, I should have asked that for the first time.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
