WWE icon Randy Orton dropped the f-bomb as he gave a scathing verdict of NXT. The Viper recently celebrated his 20th anniversary in the company and has compiled a legendary career.
Time has flown by since the grappler’s days learning his craft in the early 2000s in Evolution alongside the likes of Triple H and Ric Flair. Fast forward two decades, with his wealth of experience and knowledge of the business, Orton is someone that can be trusted with the responsibility of helping youngsters from the NXT brand transition to life in front of a bigger audience and more pressurised environment on Raw and SmackDown.
But during a press conference ahead of his tag team match with partner Riddle at a live event in London last week, the two-time Royal Rumble winner shared his assessment of his experience working with some wrestlers who came from the developmental brand. He also gave a damning assessment the process behind up-and-coming talent making that transition and what is expected of them in the ring.
“You can’t give a guy 500 matches worth of experience in front of a live crowd in three weeks,” Orton explained. “You can’t teach him the art of professional wrestling if he didn’t grow up a fan or doesn’t understand it, in three weeks.”
He added: “So now you’ve got a guy on Raw, being told by a higher-up, ‘hey red light’s on tonight, live tv, I know this is your first night, you’ve gotta make it look good'. So I don't know my opponent is green (inexperienced) and only been doing it three weeks and is being told to beat the s*** out of me and it's like ‘woah what the f*** are they teaching you down there'.
“The experience and time, they just don’t have it because the amount of time hasn't gone by for them to achieve that kind of experience.” One superstar who made his debut in NXT before heading to Raw and SmackDown is Riddle who has excelled working in a tag team with the Legend Killer.
While not initially set to last, team RK-Bro, the reigning Raw tag team champions, have been a hit with fans and the usually animated and effervescent Riddle meshes rather well with the stoic and calculated Orton. The future Hall-of-Famer has revealed he is having more fun at present than at any other time during his glittering career and thanked Riddle for it. “We work so well because on-screen we don’t have anything in common, it’s so yin and yang," Orton added.
"But in real life, we’re into the same video games, we’re fathers, we have daughters, sons, we love our children, we have a lot in common on the outside.It kinda just spills over so there’s that connection maybe, in real life. So there’s that comfortability so that on-screen, it just comes across more natural.” Riddle also took part in the press conference and added: “Even though we come across as so different, we have a lot of similarities.
“We have the same thought process when we go into a match. When you work with somebody that’s on the same page as you, and then you realise ‘half the stuff you do outside of here is just like me,’ it helps us to connect more as friends and Randy has helped me out a lot.” During Friday's show at London’s O2 Arena, Rk-Bro defeated SmackDown tag champions The Usos in a non-title match. The teams will clash again in a mega tag team championship unification match at WrestleMania Backlash this Sunday.
