Randy Orton

[MikeCampbell]

One Night Stand was the first WWE PPV I've caught since WrestleMania, and I'm about a month behind on my RAW watching. When I was watching the RVD/Orton match, my first thought was "When did Orton learn how to sell?"

 

Was this just a one off, or is Orton actually getting better?

[gordi]

One Night Stand was the first WWE PPV I've caught since WrestleMania, and I'm about a month behind on my RAW watching. When I was watching the RVD/Orton match, my first thought was "When did Orton learn how to sell?"

 

Was this just a one off, or is Orton actually getting better?

 

I had roughly the same experience: ONS was my first WWE since WM, too... and my reaction was, "When did Orton become such a great heel?"

[Dylan Waco]

Orton has been very good for a long time. I think his style of work being relatively uneventful and his behind the scenes problems have contributed to him being slept on or forgotten by the "smark" base that usually jumps onto the bandwagon of "good workers" much earlier. But really Orton was having very good tv matches with guys like Edge four years ago. He was willing to do totally unnecesary garbage stunts with Foley at a point when he really didn't have to. He had the last really good matches of Angles WWE career. His feud with Taker was very good. He's been dancing on the edge of greatness for a while an I don't think it'll be terribly surprising if he gets there.

[Loss]

I like Orton. What sold me was the TV match with Rey last year on Smackdown, which was my favorite free TV match of 2006. It's not even that Orton has changed that much about his style compared to his earlier days, but he's certainly learned how to make it mean more. It'll be fun to see him continue to improve.

[Jingus]

I saw Orton have a perfectly fine match at an indy show seven years ago. I also saw him have a painfully boring chinlock-fest just a couple months ago. He really does go back and forth between sucking and not, kind of one of those Carlito "how much do I care tonight?" types.

[whp]

His recent matches with HBK and surprisingly, RVD doing the concussion angle have been really good. Maybe it's because he knew that if HBK hadn't gotten injured and Edge was going to Smackdown that he would have been fucked as far as his position on the roster goes.

 

Sure he'll still be fed to HHH when he comes back but it's what management decide to do with him after that which will determine the rest of young Randall K. Orton's WWE career.

[Tim Evans]

The thing that really got him going was being sent home from the European tour after trashing his hotel. I don't know what they said to him but it got him on the right trail. His match with Edge where he got face heat was incredible.

[MikeCampbell]

And I'm bumping this back up. I was watching the Jeff Hardy match from RAW Monday night (which I thought was damn fine) and I suddenly thought of something: Aside from the history of attitude issues. Are Randy Orton and John Cena really that different? I don't mean they're exact equals (I'd put Cena over Orton), but when I got to really thinking, I found lots of similarities.

 

They both had good runs in OVW before being called up in 2002.

They both were groomed for greatness upon their call-ups.

They both take lots of flak for their lack of MOVEZ! Yet both have been part of some damn good matches.

They've both taken flak for their finisher, but they're two of the most over and protected finishers in the WWE today.

[sek69]

Orton took flak for his finisher? Other than that time he hilariously missed it that one time and had to redo the spot, I've never seen any complaints. In fact, him stalking the opponent right before he nails the RKO like a lion about to tear apart a gazelle is one of the best things in WWE.

 

I think what soured people on Randy was that he was a HHH project and his involvement in anything is going to get a certain percentage of people to hate it out of spite. Also the fact that Randy was pushed as a superstar from pretty much day one with all the "youngest world champion ever" stuff seemed to rub people the wrong way. I think it's going to end up being this era's version of Blue Chipper Rocky, where we'll have Established Superstar Randy recalling on DVD documentaries how it was the crowd reacting negatively that helped him find his inner heel.

[Mad Dog]

I see them as opposite ends of the spectrum. Cena to me has earned his spot by taking what was given to him and getting over to the point where they had to make him champion. Since then he's continued to prove himself by making the company money. Orton on the other hand has been handed everything along the way. He was almost there at one point but they fucked him by having HHH beat him almost immediately then turning him face. Since then it's been a long stream of Orton fucking up out of the ring and being given second, third and fourth chances where almost anyone else would've been fired on the first offense. His overness has rarely justified the continued push and he hasn't proven himself at the box office like Cena has. If Orton was suddenly gone for six months due to injury you wouldn't be hearing "they're fucked" like you did when Cena went down.

 

They both get hated on but with Cena it's just a cool smarky thing to do right now and always will be. His haters will eventually have to explain how Cena keeps coming up big in PPV matches and how business had been trending upward even though he gets booed.

[Loss]

I like both guys. In the case of Orton, he wasn't really ready for the push he was getting at first, but I feel like he eventually grew into it. Orton seems to be a bit of a mess, but it's easy to look at him and watch him wrestle and understand why WWE thinks he's the future, even if you don't agree with the train of thought. Orton is in a better position than anyone in the company right now in terms of big feuds on the horizon (HHH, Michaels, Jericho, Cena). HHH, for all his manuevering, doesn't have as many big programs on the horizon. Neither does Jericho, even after being gone for two years.