Randy Orton has admitted that his lengthy and often bizarre feud with ‘The Fiend’ Bray Wyatt wasn’t always plain sailing.
The months long rivalry between Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt which spanned the end of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021 divided fans in arenas and across the world alike.
The feud saw Orton subjected to numerous paranormal phenomena, including coughing up black ooze, being hit by a fireball from Alexa Bliss and almost flattened by a lighting rig backstage as a result of Bliss’ supernatural powers. For his part, he set The Fiend on fire during an Inferno Match at TLC in late 2020.
Appearing on The Ringer Wrestling Show, Orton reflected on his time across the ring from Wyatt. The Viper admitted that it wasn’t always easy to go with the flow and perform as the script demanded, citing his stunningly quick recovery from ‘serious burns’ as a particular stumbling block.
“Rolling with the punches is something that I realized, more recently than not, if I just accept that I’m out of control of some of these situations and I’m talking about the business right now, if I just take what they give me and do it to the best of my ability…I was doing Fiend stuff a year ago. That was hard,
Some of that was rough. They put me in the burn mask one week and the next week I’m out of it and my skin healed. It’s tough.”
Continuing on, Orton explained that there was no real point in complaining, so instead he leaned into the story as hard as he could in order to make it work and entertain the audience. This in turn led him to learn to “roll with the punches” and improve as a performer.
“Then you go to, who you would imagine you go to when you have a gripe, and go, ‘Hey, I can’t do this. Aren’t they gonna….’ [Vince McMahon impression], ‘Just do it. It’s going to work.’ ‘Okay.’
Roll with the punches. You go out there and do your best job. Even though I’m lighting a dead guy on fire and he’s the babyface…I had a very hard time trying to make that real, but I feel like I did a good enough job to where even though it was a little cringe-worthy for some people, because I really tried to believe I was going through this, I think it helped people buy into it a little bit more while we were suspending that reality and trying to make them believe like they would if they were watching the most recent Halloween movie.
They want to believe and be entertained so, the more I can accept that and make it real and make it something that I’m feeling and not just words that some 22-year-old writer wrote on paper for me, if I believe it and make it mine, I can get them to believe. That’s what kind of changed with my promos.”
The feud culminated at WrestleMania 37 when Randy Orton and The Fiend Bray Wyatt met one more time on night two of the spectacular. During the match, Alexa Bliss who was watching on, got covered in black ooze coming from a crown she was wearing. This caused a distraction, allowing Orton to hit an RKO to grab the win.
The match would prove to be Wyatt’s last in WWE, before he was released on July 31st.
In the months that followed, Orton entered into an unlikely partnership with Riddle, which eventually saw the pair capture the Raw Tag Team Titles.
H/t to Fightful for the transcription.