Randy Orton talks Kevin Owens injury, previous back injury, more

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Shortly after Kevin Owens announced that a career-threatening neck injury had removed him from the WrestleMania 41 card, he was met at ringside by the man initially slated to wrestle him: Randy Orton. It was brief and subtle, dictated by their onscreen dynamic as adversaries following months of tension. They shared barely more than a nod, but the emotion in both of them was palpable.

For everything that’s played out onscreen over the last year between Orton and Owens, it’s the person beyond the ring—the father, the husband, the genuine human—that Orton feels for as Owens undergoes neck surgery and begins the long recovery process.

“If we're being real here, my heart breaks for Kevin,” Orton says.

“I think, first and foremost, I just hate that he's gotta go through that. Even more than a physical journey he's gotta go on to let his body heal, it’s a mental journey too. His body's been through it, and now he's paying that price, like he said in the ring the other day. We all pay the price at one point or another.”

Orton has set Owens up with a second opinion from a surgeon he worked with previously. At this stage, his advice for Owens is to make the best decision for himself and his family, and to reach out if he needs to talk.

The experience is all too familiar for Orton, who has experienced the ups and downs that come with significant injuries and challenging circumstances. After dealing with back pain for nearly a decade, the solution proposed to absolve Orton of that pain would have left him unable to wrestle again.

“There wasn't a lot of help other than surgery, and I think that when I finally was told that it was time to hang up the boots–this is about six months before my operation–my world ended,” Orton says.

He battled depression and struggled with the path forward. But Orton refused to give up on his career and was determined to find a way to continue. He met with Dr. Adam Kanter in California, who put a team together that was confident they could provide Orton the relief he needed without forcing an early retirement from the ring. To do that, the team of doctors would need to avoid cutting through any muscle in his core, which he says would have rendered him unable to compete moving forward. The 2022 surgery was a success, and it kickstarted a 10-month path to recovery.

He enlisted the help of an athletic trainer, Jeff Huse in St. Louis, to help him recover in a way that packed on muscle and eased his transition back into the squared circle. During this time, Orton says he ballooned from around 240 pounds to over 270 before he returned to WWE’s Performance Center.

“I'm training hard, I'm about to go to the PC, and seeing all the younger guys, the college athletes, seeing them do their thing. Being around the noise of all the bumps in the ring that they have down at the PC and just that hunger that the younger guys had, being around that for like six weeks, I just fell in love with professional wrestling all over again,” Orton continues.

“And I've told myself ever since then, don't take a second for granted. And I haven’t.”

What brings him joy, energizes him, and makes today’s wrestling landscape so meaningful, he says, is a shift toward what he sees as a healthier backstage dynamic.

"There's a part of me that misses the old boss. But so many things have changed for the better. It's just a new school way of thinking, and everybody in that locker room is happy,” Orton says.

“So not only am I physically okay to continue to do what I love, but the environment in that locker room is so much more healthy, so much more sustainable. Most everybody's in a positive mindset. The mood backstage is killer. Everyone wants to be in a WWE locker room that's in the professional wrestling business. So right now, I have a completely different mindset.”

Orton, who just turned 45 years old, says he recently signed a five-year contract and has plans to wrestle at least until he turns 50. If he has it his way, he’d like to sign at least one more contract before it’s all said and done.

“I'd love to sign another five-year contract after that. I know realistically there's gonna be a day when I gotta stop. But it's like, I don't even think about that because I'm having so much fucking fun right now,” Orton continues.

“Knowing that it was all taken away from me, or almost was all taken away from me. Just knowing that I can't do it forever, it's just every second I'm around the guys in the locker room, that camaraderie, there’s nothing like it. Every second I'm in the ring feeling the energy from those fans, there's nothing like it. And knowing that there's a cap on that, it just makes it easier to make sure that I'm just always enjoying this.”

Orton’s passion and excitement for what comes next are part of what makes his current position so difficult. His next WrestleMania will be his 20th appearance, and he acknowledges it’s an important one for him.

“I'm staying optimistic and I think that, not to sound like a cocky asshole or anything, but I think that … it's hard for me to even say this, but I think that the star power that Randy Orton has in the professional wrestling world or bubble or whatever you want to call it. I think that it would be a shame if I wasn't somehow put in a position where I can at least hit an RKO at WrestleMania,” Orton says.

“My hopes would be that we are able to make some sense of something and get people invested.”

Orton points back to the story he was telling with Owens and the emotions that came with that. He says he was warming up his punt kick, preparing to showcase that in front of a live audience for the first time in about 15 years. He was genuinely excited about how he and Owens would pay off their rivalry.

With WrestleMania now just days away, Orton questions if he’ll have the opportunity to wrestle a 20-minute match, if there’s an opponent worthy of his attention, and how they can tell the story in such a short amount of time.

Last week provided some indication that a match is on the cards. His contentious relationship with general manager Nick Aldis has dragged on. But Solo Sikoa, who didn’t previously have a match scheduled, has presented himself as another option for Orton.

Whether or not a match is in the cards at WrestleMania, Orton is keen to pay close attention to what happens in the main event of Night 2 between “The American Nightmare” Cody Rhodes and John Cena, with the Undisputed WWE Championship on the line.

Orton says his promo with Rhodes on Smackdown a few weeks ago wasn’t scripted. Instead, it was off the top of his head because that’s genuinely how he feels.

“I remember watching him and Seth at Hell in a Cell, and seeing his chest and the trauma that he had endured. Then knowing the pain that he had been in, and knowing why he had done it and it being for the fans and him knowing that he needed to suck it up and do what he had to do that day. There's not many guys or girls that would put themselves through that.

I can't say that I would,” Orton says.

“So seeing him turn into a tough motherfucker and persevere. And come out on top, finish his story. All the things I said the other day when I was speaking to him in the ring, like I meant them from the bottom of my heart. There wasn't a writer that gave me those things to say.”

Orton credits Cena and Rhodes for their ability to pull emotions out of the fans in the fallout from Cena’s industry-shaking heel turn. He says it’s a treat to watch two guys at the top of their game build this story into the biggest show of the year. Orton says he’d “love nothing more than to be involved, whether it’s in their storyline down the line, whether it’s involved in that match at ‘Mania.”

He believes there shouldn’t be any outside interference at WrestleMania, and we should see what happens after the dust settles between Rhodes and Cena. When their match is in the rearview mirror, though, Orton is clear that he’d like to mix it up again with both men.

For Cena and all of the history between them, Orton would appreciate the opportunity to square off with Cena at least one more time before he hangs up his sneakers later this year. Orton is a bit more certain that he’ll have an opportunity to face off with Rhodes, and says we’ll get some interaction between them before it’s all said and done.

“I feel that even more so than John, or even more so than Roman (Reigns) or (The) Rock, I have a history with Cody that nobody else can compare to,” Orton says.

“I took him under my wing when he first came in, in ’07, ’08. And then of course we formed Legacy and we just have a history, man. His father's last match was with me, back in like maybe ’06 at the Great American Bash, we were in a Bull Rope match. Getting in the ring with either of those guys would be simply amazing. But at ‘Mania, I'll be very much content sitting in the back and watching those two and seeing what kind of story they tell.”

There are plenty of directions WWE can take that could result from Orton’s inclusion in this rivalry, potentially paired alongside Rhodes against the trio of The Rock, Cena, and Travis Scott. If it came down to bringing another celebrity into the fold, Orton agrees Bad Bunny could make a solid choice as their celebrity partner.

“I don't know how many bumps Travis Scott has taken, but I know Bad Bunny being probably one of the richest, most well-known performers in the world right now, he'll get in the ring and he'll learn the craft,” Orton says.

“He'll learn the art of what we do as much as he's able to in a short amount of time so that he can come wrestle or be a part of a Royal Rumble or be a part of something in the ring. And not many celebrities would do that, especially you just don't see celebrities on his level. Yes, Bad Bunny could be in my corner anytime.”

That’s perhaps a bit of wishful thinking and getting too far ahead of ourselves. For now, Orton’s focus is on seeing where his path to WrestleMania takes him before Backlash brings WWE back to his hometown of St. Louis in May.

“I hope, and I would assume that there's some big plans in the works for St. Louis. But I think we gotta get through WrestleMania first and see where all the dominoes land and go from there,” Orton says.

“I’ve got a suite lined up at St. Louis for Backlash. That's May 10th, and I'm gonna have, I think that suite holds like 30 to 40 people. So I plan on doing whatever I can to show out for the hometown, that's for sure.”
 

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Watching this after Raw . Randy doesn't do many interviews. Should be fun listening to what he has to say.