The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 Randy Orton Turns

Like many long-tenured WWE stars, Randy Orton has had his share of face and heel turns. This may be particularly true for Orton because he occupies the oddball space of being all-but-undeniably better as a heel, and yet a well-established enough star that a segment of the audience will always want to cheer him.

To his credit—and to the credit of the booking team—Orton’s turns have often been well executed, capitalizing on key storylines or playing with the kayfabe-reality continuum to deliver on existing dynamics between Orton and the fans. This article takes a look at Orton’s seven best executed turns with an emphasis on the moment of the turn, rather than its long-term effects.

#7. Burning the Wyatts

Of all of Orton’s turns, I’ll concede this one’s a little bit shaky. Although Orton went from heel to face, if we accept WWE’s storyline at face value, he was actually a face all along who had infiltrated the Wyatt Family, only to betray them. Just the same, Orton had been running with Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper, ostensibly as a heel, and even holding the SmackDown Tag Team Championship with them, for nearly four months.

From there, Orton torched Wyatt’s compound, in an electric on-location moment. To be frank, I hated the Orton-Wyatt feud. Their three PPV matches were all terrible, and I thought it was a travesty that they got the WWE Championship attached to their match at WrestleMania 33. Their run as partners was fun enough, though, and the moment of this turn is on the short list for moments when WWE best realized the more “out there” elements of Wyatt’s character. Orton’s fire advanced a story that was important to WWE’s overall direction at the time, and made for compelling television as it was happening.

#6. Exacting Revenge on Seth Rollins

Late 2014 saw Randy Orton face a familiar scenario of Triple H proving there was no honor among thieves as he, for the second time, turned heel-er on his partner in crime. The Authority chose Seth Rollins as its new in-ring leader, leaving Orton in the dust.

Orton was out of action for months to film The Condemned 2. His return heavily hinted at a face turn, as an Orton-Rollins showdown began to crystallize as the direction for WrestleMania 31. The transition was start-stop for Orton, though, culminating in a March episode of Raw in which Orton and Rollins teamed up in a handicap match against face Roman Reigns. Orton first abandoned his partner so he’d take the loss, then demonstrated some of his best qualities—combining a vicious heel-like sensibility with going after a top heel to assert himself as a newly minted babyface once again.

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#5. The Randy News Network

Randy Orton’s original run in WWE didn’t go particularly well. While he had a great look, reasonable talent, and a heck of a pedigree as a third-generation star, fans failed to buy into his white meat babyface act. After he went down to injury WWE was fortunate to have a blue-print at the ready to rebrand his character.

Orton was walking a similar path to The Rock in terms of his assets, and the crowd’s reaction to him, and so it made complete sense to book him similarly to The Rock, with a heel turn as an arrogant, entitled young blue chipper to help him get over with the fans. The Randy News Network was an ideal vehicle to accomplish this end, as Orton stayed in the audience’s mind and slowly built heat by offering arrogant, unnecessary updates on his condition and recovery, acting as though the fans were all rooting for him.

Orton’s transition to heel status was smooth enough, but went even better for him joining up with the Evolution faction immediately upon his return. He was off and running in his much more natural heel persona.

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#4. Hating on Jeff Hardy and the Indies

It’s always difficult to appropriately rank a recent occurrence, but Randy Orton’s latest heel turn from this past summer rightly earned widespread praise. The general consensus is that for as much money as Vince McMahon sees in The Viper as a face, he’s a much better all around performer as a heel, and Orton proved that to be true in this case.

After months off of television, Orton made his surprise return at Extreme Rules, wordlessly coming to the ring, teasing a confrontration with new US Champ Shinsuke Nakamura, then stomping on fallen Jeff Hardy’s already injured groin. Orton would follow up with a more fully realized attack against Hardy two nights later on SmackDown, then cut one of his all time best promos in the aftermath, explaining his disdain for Hardy, indie wrestling, and their sensibilities relative to his own path growing into a star in the WWE style.

The conventional wisdom is that heels operate best with understandable, believable motives, and this was Orton capitalizing one what fans could easily imagine truly running through his head, in a veteran’s promo to shift directions for his character one more time.

#3. Cashing in Money in the Bank

By 2013, it wasn’t exactly novel for someone to turn heel via Money in the Bank cash-in. Though it was a slower burn, we’d seen CM Punk and Daniel Bryan do it before, it and the idea of Randy Orton going rogue wasn’t entirely shocking by that stage of his career. However, all the pieces came together for one of Orton’s best turns at SummerSlam 2013, when he and Triple H crashed Bryan’s WWE Championship victory celebration with the briefcase in hand.

Bryan had caught fire that summer, and successfully worked a face-face program opposite John Cena that hinged on the idea that Cena represented the establishment, while Bryan was a scrappy underdog who’d worked his way to the top. The meta and kayfabe stories converged, and it was hugely satisfying to see Bryan pin Cena cleanly in the main event of the second biggest show of the year.

In Orton and Triple H realigning, both turning heel, and launching The Authority, they fundamentally shifted the WWE landscape. This was Triple H more or less debuting his post full-timer, heel authority figure role, as Orton settled into the role of establishment champion as a true veteran and guy it was easy for fans across the board to hate.

We can debate the ups and downs of Bryan and Orton’s booking over the months to follow, but for the moment of the turn itself, it was an electric surprise, and a moment that felt important both as it went down, and from five years’ hindsight.

#2. RKOing Stacy Keibler

Randy Orton suffered one of the steepest falls from grace in WWE history when he rode a wave of momentum all the way to his first WWE Championship at SummerSlam 2004, segued into a white hot face turn when Evolution abandoned him, and looked positioned to chase and ultimately overcome Triple H to regain the title and grab the face-of-the-company crown.

That chase period demonstrated Orton was not only best as a heel, but not yet equipped to generate any heat as a face. Fans turned on him just as they warmed to Batista, who wound up usurping Orton’s presumptive main event spot for WrestleMania 21.

Orton regained some of his mojo, however, when he went hunting for The Undertaker’s streak. Little by little, his heelish bravado seeped back into his promos. It all culminated in Orton nailing an RKO on kayfabe girlfriend Stacy Keibler, to demonstrate both his total focus on his war with the Dead Man, and his callous heel leanings.

One could argue that Orton’s long feud to follow with the Phenom ultimately did his character more harm than good, but the start of it did make him a full fledged heel again, and so set him up for the more successful than not decade-plus to follow.

#1. Exiled from Evolution

For his considerable accomplishments, including WrestleMania main events, world title wins, two Royal Rumble victories, and working programs opposite a veritabke whose who of top level stars from the last fifteen years, Randy Orton will likely never exceed the early moment career when Triple H gave him a thumbs down, and proceeded to join Batista and Ric Flair in beating down The Legend Killer.

To be fair, this moment was more about Evolution turning heel-er on Orton, and Orton wouldn’t formally earn full-fledged face until the following week’s Raw. Nonetheless, this moment rates for sheer shock value and genuine electricity, as WWE pulled the trigger on the turn far sooner and more violently than anyone saw coming.

This turn tends to sour a little based on Orton’s lukewarm face run to follow. Still, for the moment of the turn itself, it takes the cake for me in this week’s countdown.

What would you add to the list? Turning face against his Legacy allies was the nearest miss for me. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.