7 Ups And 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Jan 8)

3. Rhyno Needs Some Toughening Up

rhyno samoa joe
WWE.com

So a storyline that started out with Rhyno trying to toughen Heath Slater up has morphed into Rhyno trying to show his tag team partner how to toughen up by getting beaten up each week.

Last week, Rhyno was taken out by Braun Strowman. This week, he challenged a pissed-off Samoa Joe, who squashed the Man-Beast. How exactly is Rhyno showing Slater how to be a tougher wrestler? Originally, this felt like there would be training vignettes, Heath wrestling bigger wrestlers and having moral victories.

Instead, Rhyno is being jobbed out. Maybe there’s a twist coming, but it feels like the writers had an idea and abandoned it quickly. For now, no sale.

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.