Randy Orton

[The King of Old School]

Easily one of the most decorated and gifted wrestlers of the past 15 years, but has anyone really noticed he's been gone?

 

My simple question is, upon his return, how do you make him relevent again?

 

Probably shouldn't be right at the top of the card at this point in his career, but still far too good/valuble go be trading wins/losses with the likes of Del Rio etc.

[DavidB6937]

I miss his news bulletins.

[Briefcase]

I couldn't care less about Orton. Find him bland and repetitive.

 

I don't think the WWE has really missed him at all and I'm not even sure if he could get back to the top (unless they do the brand split with two world titles). 

[Rosler28]

Orton has gone as far as hes ever going to get. He should retire

[SpursRiot2012]

There's a place for Randy. And that place is in a never ending feud with John Cena over the world title. It is known.

[UK Kat Von D]

His problem is he excels at stories WWE just can't run with. This is by no means a fuck PG speech, but his best stuff is when he plays the psychotic nutcase. He can't be trying to Punt Steph all the time and for a psycho to be a psycho he has to do things that just aren't possible anymore. The monotone voice is just too dull to get behind as a face and without going full evil, what's the point?

 

The only thing that interests me in the guy is the clever ways he can hit his finish. You can pop a crowd with that but you can't build a story

[HarmonicGenerator]

I've not missed him in the slightest, but at least there's a couple of months' worth of fresh matches for him when he does come back. Orton vs Styles and Orton vs Owens would both be decent. If he's heel, Orton vs Zayn. And they haven't got around to Orton vs Lesnar yet. That'll do him 'til the Rumble, at any rate.

[King Pitcos]

His problem is he excels at stories WWE just can't run with. This is by no means a fuck PG speech, but his best stuff is when he plays the psychotic nutcase. He can't be trying to Punt Steph all the time and for a psycho to be a psycho he has to do things that just aren't possible anymore. The monotone voice is just too dull to get behind as a face and without going full evil, what's the point?

Raw was PG for the whole of the 2009 Orton vs McMahon family feud, wasn't it? There's just a magic sometimes to battering the first family that allows even the likes of Roman Reigns and Brie Bella to get dem on side on occasion.

 

What has Orton done since then that's been interesting to anyone? The star jump, the cash-in for the first week, and the week he was Rick Rude.

 

The only thing that interests me in the guy is the clever ways he can hit his finish. You can pop a crowd with that but you can't build a story

You can build a story with the "outta nowhere" thing, it's just a very specific story and you can't really keep going back to it. There was a Raw where they did it really well last year.

 

His big problem is there's not much to him as a character -- that's true of much of the roster, but Orton struggles in his tepid Internet score. He's never going to be the big indie hope against Reigns or Cena, and he's never going to be the Internet hate figure that Reigns or Cena (or even Sheamus) are. He's got decent name value and a fair old fanbase so he does warrant being near the top, but it's just so hard to make anything he does interesting and others can suffer as a result. Sometimes it's himself who suffers, like being such a fucking non-entity that his whole title reign was just building a Daniel Bryan vs Triple H match that wasn't even booked originally.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Probably the most overhyped wrestler for what little he's brought to wrestling in the last 10 years. He's the type of wrestler that needed to go to WCW, if this was 1998. Something different is much needed from him. He's capable of having great matches, but generally just bores you  when he's on TV everyweek. He's a bit like Sheamus in that sense. He's so uninteresting these days, you forget that he can really pull off a top match.

[Bellenda Carlisle]

I love Randy and I can't wait for him to come back but I realise not everyone feels that way.

I'd stick him in a really high profile tag team with one of the Shield boys or Sheamus or something. I like those big star tag team pairings, they could dominate the tag division for a bit before splitting up and putting the team of the day over. It would give them a bunch of new opponents and a bit of a change of scene. It would also keep him away from the world title belt for a bit.

[Benno]

One of the Ex-WWE writers was doing the rounds on the Torch audio shows (Alex Greenfield I think) talking about wrestlers who like to improvise and mentioned that Orton was someone happiest with a script in front of him he could memorise and then just go out and recite it. Explains a lot about him. I don't think he's ever cut a memorable promo.

[UK Kat Von D]

 

His problem is he excels at stories WWE just can't run with. This is by no means a fuck PG speech, but his best stuff is when he plays the psychotic nutcase. He can't be trying to Punt Steph all the time and for a psycho to be a psycho he has to do things that just aren't possible anymore. The monotone voice is just too dull to get behind as a face and without going full evil, what's the point?

Raw was PG for the whole of the 2009 Orton vs McMahon family feud, wasn't it? There's just a magic sometimes to battering the first family that allows even the likes of Roman Reigns and Brie Bella to get dem on side on occasion.

 

What has Orton done since then that's been interesting to anyone? The star jump, the cash-in for the first week, and the week he was Rick Rude.

 

The only thing that interests me in the guy is the clever ways he can hit his finish. You can pop a crowd with that but you can't build a story

You can build a story with the "outta nowhere" thing, it's just a very specific story and you can't really keep going back to it. There was a Raw where they did it really well last year.

 

His big problem is there's not much to him as a character -- that's true of much of the roster, but Orton struggles in his tepid Internet score. He's never going to be the big indie hope against Reigns or Cena, and he's never going to be the Internet hate figure that Reigns or Cena (or even Sheamus) are. He's got decent name value and a fair old fanbase so he does warrant being near the top, but it's just so hard to make anything he does interesting and others can suffer as a result. Sometimes it's himself who suffers, like being such a fucking non-entity that his whole title reign was just building a Daniel Bryan vs Triple H match that wasn't even booked originally.

I said it wasn't a PG Sucks thing because they can still do angles like that, it's just rare occasions. It's not a suitable character to be doing every week. They can still pull it out the bag when a story needs a shot in the arm, but it's not a entire character. That was 2009, it would be impossible for them to have maintained those kind of antics for years following it.

 

They can build the RKO outta nowhere for short stories, but again it's not something he can do every single week for a long period of time.

 

If you compare him to Cena who has been around a similar length of time it shows how limited his is. Cena is a guy who can basically do the same thing every week and get results. It just needs tweaking slightly occasionally and fresh opponents. Where as Orton goes on standby for long periods doing nothing of importance because the strong points of his work wouldn't allow him to do his best stuff every week

[Duke]

Orton would probably be baest suited doing what Cena did with the US title. Hes till got gravitas and credibility but lacks real purpose. He'd do those long open challenge rko out of nowhere matches really well.

[Scott Malbranque]

Could have been. Isn’t.

 

The only time I have ever really enjoyed Ortii was when he went up against Kurt Angle at One Night Stand 2, his Bushwhacker face during his beat down of Christian on the announce table and his jumping splits, but other than that I have no interest in him and haven’t missed him.

He could have been fucking magnificent as he looks like the sort who should be able to effortlessly deliver promos, but they’re shit, and that he should be intense and energetic in the ring, but he wrestles like 1985 and that punching the canvas punching, Di Canio tantrum thing he does before an RKO is cruel.

Plus, his entrance music is fucking terrible – I don’t give a pox what anyone says to the contrary - and saps the interest, energy, drive and vim out of me by just hearing it. It’s up/down there with Drew McIntyres entrance theme.

[The Gaffer]

One of the Ex-WWE writers was doing the rounds on the Torch audio shows (Alex Greenfield I think) talking about wrestlers who like to improvise and mentioned that Orton was someone happiest with a script in front of him he could memorise and then just go out and recite it. Explains a lot about him. I don't think he's ever cut a memorable promo.

He also said on Sam Robert's radio show once that he more or less implicitly trusts the writers and will simply do what they give him. So yeah it seems for once it actually is fair to put the blame for being a boring sod on the talent. I don't know if he's really that terribly interesting in real life to say that we've missed out on some great Orton quips but he's surely capable of more. It could be tough channeling his whole snarky apathy thing into a character that doesn't say inappropriate things in todays Raw environment.

 

The last good thing he done was that stuff with Christian. Was SummerSlam the match where they brawled outside and Orton looked like a Bushwhacker with his own spit on his face? I think that stole the show from Cena/Punk for me. What a belter.

 

What's the last good thing he done before that? I liked that part of his career where he smoked a joint to get suspended for a month whenever he felt a bit fed up.