Randy Orton On If He Thinks About WWE HOF Induction, Giving Advice, His Kids Favorite Wrestlers
As noted, WWE Superstar Randy Orton recently spoke with Donny Fandango on 105.7 The Point. Orton talked about his time in the business, the resurgence of Jinder Mahal's career and much more. Here are some highlights:
If he ever thinks about going into the Hall Of Fame:
"I've been around a minute but I started young, so yeah I have another five or ten years in me, easy. It's something I have thought about, if anything it's just a little nerve racking thing – the speech for the Hall Of Fame. I don't consider myself the best talker in the world, and sometimes I get carried away and I think I can say whatever's on my mind, and I know it's a live show, The Hall Of Fame – I just wonder how it's all going to go down. If it goes down, if I'm fortunate enough for it to go down. But yes, it has crossed my mind but I'm living in the present and enjoying what I'm doing now. I've done so much for the WWE. Everything I've done, any movie I've done, any notoriety I have, it's because of them. So I owe them everything. My father, my grandfather, the wrestling business, the WWE in particular, has really given me everything. A lot of happiness, my kids are taken care of, my wife is happy, they get to travel. A lot of pluses come with it, the Hall Of Fame would just be the cherry on top."
If people pull them aside to give them feedback on what they're doing on the mic:
"Definitely. There's so many guys that get feedback from so many other different guys. A lot of times it might be hard because you have like, 10 producers, including Vince or Triple H, Scott Armstrong, Road Dogg – these guys are giving you their advance slash opinion slash I would've done it this way. But not everything works – like John Cena can tell me 'Oh this worked for me, try this.' Well it's not gonna work for me, I'm complete – it worked for you. You can't please everybody that gives you advice and I think sometimes the younger guys get into the bad habit of asking a lot of different individuals, and these individuals, when they go out there into the ring, whether it's promo or in-ring stuff, physical stuff, when they don't change it up how that mentor or producer told them to then you get a little heat. I choose Arn Anderson, Pat Patterson, my father, Triple H and Vince, that's my wheelhouse of guys that I know I can get feedback from, they know what they're doing, but I'm at a point in my career too where if I don't do it I know that it's not going to affect me down the road because I didn't do exactly what they said.
"I think that's some advice I gave Jinder. When he first came back he was on RAW, and I think that has helped him out. A lot of the younger guys are so anxious to please and to get better and they try almost too hard, they need to take a step back and relax. I started kind of getting it, so to speak, the lightbulb kind of stopped giving as much of a crap, I guess you can say. I don't mean in the sense of being lazy or not caring, that's not true at all. But kind of letting it happen out there and letting it be more organic as opposed to coming up with all these ideas where it looks more choreographed or if you're banking on a reaction from the crowd in a particular point in a promo or a match and you don't get that reaction, being prepared to go another route with what you're doing. There's a lot of little aspects to the game that guys can get better at and that's just a few."
The radio host shares a story of two 30-year-old fans making his daughter, a John Cena fan, cry by chanting 'Cena Sucks' in her direction:
"WWE is just different than any other thing. If you took your daughter to a Selena Gomez concert, you wouldn't have that problem. It wouldn't be the same – we bring out emotions in our fans – it is good. I have two daughters myself. If anyone made them cry, I'd have a problem with it too. I don't know what I'd do in the same situation, probably nothing that a father should do, but I would've had some choice words for those two 30-year-olds."
Who are his kids' favorite WWE Superstars:
"Well, they're partial to me. Cena – they have their favorites like Luke Harper, they like watching him, Sin Cara, the guys that do all the cool aerial maneuvers. Roman Reigns – it just depends. They enjoyed – they were fans before me and their mother met. That's how I met her, was actually at a show up in New York she brought the boys to a show. So they were fans since they were very young. They'll quiz me about matches I've had and I'll have no idea what year it took place, who it was against, where it was, what the finish was – simply because of the WWE Network, YouTUbe. Last night I was watching a match with my grandfather from 1958. Just to remember where it came from, how it was back then. It was a hard, stiff boxing ring and they didn't take all these bumps. They told a story and the fans were on the edge of their seat because of how they were telling the story. And so many things have changed, but you can watch those old tapes via YouTube and the network and it gives guys like me ideas on how to mix it up and be different than everybody else. So it's a pretty powerful thing."
You can listen to Orton's full interview with Donny Fandango of 105.7 The Point at this link.
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit 105.7 The Point with an H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
Source: 105.7 The Point