Randy Orton Reveals When He Plans to Retire From WWE

Randy Orton has been a staple of WWE television since 2002 and remains one of the most decorated stars on its current roster as a Grand Slam Champion and 14-time world champion. After playing a massive role in Monday Night Raw‘s main event scene in 2020, he pivoted to a months-long feud with Alexa Bliss and “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt up through WrestleMania 37. He then formed an unlikely alliance with Riddle, becoming the wildly-popular duo RK-Bro and winning the Raw Tag Team Championships at SummerSlam 2021. The two dropped the titles to American Alpha earlier this month but have continued their program with Chad Gable and Otis in an effort to win the gold back.

“The Viper” was on The Ringer Wrestling Show this week to promote the Royal Rumble taking place in his hometown of St. Louis this coming Saturday and was asked how much longer he believes he’ll keep wrestling. Orton explained that he expects to be done when he turns 50 (he’s currently 41) and is doing everything in his power to keep his body healthy physically so that when he does hang up his boots it will be on his own terms. He then explained that he has no interest in pivoting to a part-time role, as wrestling once a week keeps him in good shape.

Elsewhere in the interview, he explained how he had to change his outlook on wrestling during that infamous program with Wyatt — “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,” Orton said. “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. 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 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,” he added.