Randy Orton Reveals When He Knew He Was a Main Eventer

Randy Orton just got done main-eventing WrestleMania night one, and it feels like he’s been main eventing for a long time. But In a pre-WrestleMania interview with Ultimatekiko at Culture Kings in Las Vegas, he talked about when he first realized he could hang in the main event.

The answer may not surprise any fan who has watched Orton’s entire career, well, evolve:

“Well, that would have been a while a while ago. Um, I think brushing elbows with the likes of Ric Flair and Triple H and even Batista in Evolution. That got started in ’03. I had an injury about 6 months after I debuted…Almost ruined everything. And I came back and I think my first match back after a 4month recovery, I was in a match with the Dudley Boyz, against me and Batista, and both me and Dave got injured in that match. I broke my foot clean in half. Batista tore his tricep and this whole idea of Evolution, I thought that was it.”

“I knew coming back from the shoulder that we were going to get this thing going. But then I broke my foot. I was out another four months. So I think when I came back and I realized that they just stopped everything in its tracks — and even though I was out with two separate injuries in a short amount of time — that they were waiting for me to return just to be part of this group Evolution with the likes of Ric Flair and Triple H. That’s when I realized, oh maybe I got something here that I didn’t see it in myself at the time, but I knew that they saw it in me.”

Orton recalls that that changed his whole mindset, saying, “And I think that’s when I realized that, oh, I’ve got a fighting chance. I’m not going to make it a fact that I’m injury prone. For a while there, it was I was labeled injury prone. And I mean, I’m talking 20 years ago.”

“I’ve had my injuries. We all have. But the resiliency of being able to come back and do it for years, maybe get something repaired, fix a knee, a spine, a shoulder, whatever. But then to put the boots back in on, get in the ring and do it again. That resiliency, I feel like that’s a rare thing in our business for someone to have 20+ years, and do it at the level I’ve done it for as long as I’ve done it.”