Orton told Matt how continuously doing the RKO affected him.
It has been over a year since Randy Orton wrestled. As of this writing, his last match was on the 5/20/22 episode of Friday Night SmackDown. In May 2023, Randy’s father, ‘Cowboy’ Bob Orton Jr. stated that he believes doctors have told Randy to stop wrestling.
Randy’s name came up during the latest edition of The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy podcast. The topic of conversation was The Hardys versus The Young Bucks at AEW Double or Nothing 2022. Matt was asked if he feels The Hardys’ bodies had changed a lot since their previous encounter with The Bucks in 2017.
Hardy shared that he’s been working on improving his balance and went on to mention that he talked with Randy Orton and Orton told him how messed up his body was from continuously doing the RKO finisher.
Yes, it has, it has (our bodies changed between ROH Ladder match in 2017 & Double or Nothing 2022 versus Young Bucks) and there’s some things… Once again, it’s very weird, as you get older, it’s just like you have to change things to keep your body in a certain condition and I’m constantly in a process of changing things. I actually had a lot of people that complimented the stuff at Double or Nothing and I’ve been doing a lot of balance training, as crazy as that sounds. But I’ve been doing balance training because just like, I had a long conversation with Randy Orton. He was talking about how messed up his body was just from doing the RKO over and over and over again and you know, I told him, ‘You can only imagine how my hips and lower back feel after all those leg drops over all the years’ but he was just talking about how bad his balance was, that he didn’t realize and that kind of got me thinking and I’ve done more balance training than anything else recently and I feel like it’s helped me on my movement and whatnot and hopefully my flexibility.
Orton has been part of WWE for 23 years. He is a 14-time World Champion in the company.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
