He may not have retired from pro wrestling as many, including The Sun , speculated he would after he was fired in storyline last December, but Monday Night Raw superstar Rhyno appears to be weeks away from letting his WWE contract expire and leaving the company as he had previously teased.
On Wednesday, Wrestling Inc. reported that the 43-year-old Rhyno’s contract, as he had previously hinted, is indeed set to expire in July. Even with Rhyno still under contract for another two months with WWE, the veteran grappler also appears to be accepting independent bookings, as suggested by a tweet from International Wrestling Cartel (IWC), which confirmed on Tuesday night that Rhyno will be returning to the promotion’s roster later this year.
Rhyno, real name Terrance Gerin, first made mention of his WWE contract expiring in July in an interview last month with Press & Guide , where, as quoted by WrestlingNews.co , he suggested that he might have other plans once his contract with WWE is up.
“I love working with WWE,” Rhyno told Press & Guide . “They’re great. But I might have to go somewhere else. I don’t know yet.”
WrestlingNews.co’s Paul Davis added that per his sources, WWE does not have any creative plans for Rhyno going forward and is willing to let his contract expire.
After getting fired by then-acting general manager Baron Corbin on the December 3, 2018, episode of Monday Night Raw and reportedly telling the live audience that he was retiring, Rhyno clarified things a week later, explaining in a video that he had “no plans on retiring” after all, as noted in a separate Wrestling Inc. report. Since then, he has only appeared sporadically on WWE programming and last competed in the Andre the Giant Battle Royal at WrestleMania 35 on April 7.
Another WWE star looks to be leaving once his contract expires in Rhyno. #WWE #Rhyno https://t.co/y959OlA66F pic.twitter.com/oMQYWLGLwU
— 411 Wrestling (@411wrestling) May 1, 2019
Prior to his move to Monday Night Raw with tag teammate Heath Slater as part of the 2018 Superstar Shake-Up, the duo had a mildly successful stint on SmackDown Live , where they became the blue brand’s first-ever Tag Team Champions after the 2016 brand split. Before all that, however, Rhyno had enjoyed a lengthy career across multiple other promotions, including ECW, Ring of Honor, and TNA, and also spent several years in WWE’s mid-card ranks in the 2000s.
If Rhyno ends up leaving WWE in July, he will become the latest in a growing list of WWE superstars who have parted ways with the company in 2019. As pointed out recently by The Inquisitr , Dean Ambrose, Goldust, Tye Dillinger, and Hideo Itami were all allowed to leave WWE earlier in the year, while wrestlers such as Luke Harper and The Revival remain with the promotion despite reports alleging or confirming that they had asked to be released from their contracts.
