Does anybody give a shit about Randy Orton?

[BoneSoldier]

Orton is good in the ring, but he's a black hole of charisma. No matter how many good matches he has (and he carried Reigns to a damn good match last night), it's impossible to give a shit about him.

[goc]

They totally fucked him by making him The Authority's hand picked guy. They should have went through with their teasing of The Authority dropping Orton and going with someone else, either ADR or The Miz and then having Orton go full on IED Viper mode like he started to do when he beat up The Miz in front of his super dorky dad.

 

Randy Orton the lackey to HHH & Stephanie isn't compelling at all, and I don't think Orton even gives a shit about trying to do a good job in that role. The only interesting thing he's done to me since that time is fuck with Batista about the fans not liking him during the build up to Mania.

[C.S.]

Taking a sabbatical doesn't even work to freshen a guy up in WWE anymore because the booking is so terrible that 2 weeks after someone comes back they seem to already be treading water and not doing anything important. Like Sheamus' recent return and Christian's before that. Even RVD, which some people can blame on the fact that he hasn't updated his look or moveset in over a decade, but the crowds still seem to be excited to see him when he makes the initial return.

 

Good point. RVD felt beyond stale within weeks of returning, after being gone for years. He means nothing now. Ditto for Jericho, whose presence no longer excites me, even though it should (I've always liked him). The fault? Crappy booking.

 

Sheamus is treading water too - and wasn't even on the last PPV, despite being a champion. Terrible. Again, not his fault.

 

The booking and lack of character development may be at its all-time worst. Even in other down periods (mid-90s), everyone had a storyline and direction - as goofy as it may have been. Shit made sense.

[Johnny Sorrow]

the irony is that it was Orton, not his opponent, who took the snoozer match spot on the card last night and made it something interesting. Dude just carried a still incredibly green Reigns to the best singles match of his life and people here shit on him for it.

Exactamundo.

 

Here's another thing that drives me nuts that some people do. The constant "He shit in a bag", "He trashed hotel rooms", " He behaved like a prima Donna asshole"....from nearly ten years ago that gets brought up to bash the guy. Never mind that he's now older and has stated that he behaved terribly when he was a kid getting pushed to the top. Like anybody deserves to be judged by how they acted when they were 21. I sure don't want to be.

[BigBadMick]

Where does Orton stand on the PWO re-evaluation scale?

 

He's not the outcast that Brody is, surely?

[Guest Eduardo James]

I'm pretty sure he's always been looked down upon. Personally, I like the guy's work, but can see why others wouldn't and he can definitely mail it in at times. To say the audience doesn't care about him is ridiculous or just being willfully obtuse.

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

I'm pretty sure he's always been looked down upon. Personally, I like the guy's work, but can see why others wouldn't and he can definitely mail it in at times. To say the audience doesn't care about him is ridiculous or just being willfully obtuse.

So the dead silence when Orton comes out means the sound on my TV is somehow malfunctioning during each of his appearances?

[Guest Eduardo James]

Yes? His matches get plenty of reactions.

[Benbeeach]

Almost in everything, seems like the perfect way to describe Randy.

His peak for my personal excitement in him, with him, was when he beat Benoit at Summer Slam 10 years ago (just aged myself and everything around me by typing that). The match was excellent, the finish was excellent. The intrigue in him being able to beat Benoit one on one when his mentor/leader Triple H could not, and the potential tension it would have caused in Evolution all felt very ripe for the taking of my dollars. If you're gonna cut the Eddy and Benoit miracle runs short, then THAT was the way to go about it.

. . . then they booted Orton from Evolution the very next night, took the title off him the very next pay-per-view, Cena rose in alot of the ways they thought Randy might (and then some) and Orton's been treading water as number 2 ever since.

[Matt D]

I think it's fitting that Matysik is so high on him because frankly, I think he belongs in 1983 St. Louis. He would have thrived there. Orton is a guy we'd be so much higher on if he wasn't wrestling two competitive 15 minute matches a week on TV.

[Childs]

Where does Orton stand on the PWO re-evaluation scale?

 

He's not the outcast that Brody is, surely?

 

I harbor no great love for Orton, but the hatred for him here strikes me as weirdly out of scale and has actually made me more sympathetic to him. I found it strange that people immediately shat on his work with Reigns, when actually, he worked a pretty good match with some beautifully timed spots and put the rising star over clean. I even think he works a chinlock pretty well :-)

 

Seriously though, I understand the exhaustion with Orton. I don't get excited for his programs either. But I'm fine with him serving as an upper-card gatekeeper for the next generation and think his work in that capacity has been better than suggested by this thread.

[theconstipatedsmark]

I was actually digging his most recent heel run that started last SummerSlam, but then it turned into the same old Orton bullcrap. That unification match at TLC last year was so underwhelming it was ridiculous.