Randy Orton Talks 2017 WWE Hall of Fame, His Current Longterm Storyline with Bray Wyatt

Randy Orton recently spoke with IGN to promote WrestleMania 33 and his match against WWE Champion Bray Wyatt. The full interview is at this link and below are highlights:

IGN: Decades ago, feuds and storylines could go on for years. It seems like, while we’re not back to anything that long, a lot of angles can go on for months now. What’s it like to be part of this long gestating Bray Wyatt storyline? It’s gone on for about half a year now and it looks like it’s heading to a big payoff at WrestleMania.

Orton: Yeah, it’s few and far between when you get an angle with a guy, or guys, and it really carries on for a long time. I’ve had a few in my time. Like with Mick Foley, Undertaker, Shawn, Triple H. And in more recent memory, Seth Rollins and I worked together for a long time. Daniel Bryan. Christian and I. Cena, of course. Whenever you get that four or five months to tell a story, and maybe a title changes hands a few times, whatever you’re doing, you’re married to that guy for that amount of time. And some people may fall off, may lose interest, but I think the biggest mistake we can make is to get scared, get cold feet, and then stop that storyline because we think it’s not what the fans want to see. With the Wyatt thing, when I first jumped ship and joined the Wyatt Family, fans were like “Oh, I’ve seen this before.” They’ve done that before. They’ve kidnapped guys and cast their spells and all that stuff. Daniel Bryan was a member of the Wyatts but that only lasted a few weeks and then he turned on them. So a lot of people, I think, thought this was going to be short-lived and it just started the buzz a little bit.

Bray, Luke and I would go to Europe and tag against American Alpha and Apollo Crews and we’re the heels but I’m still a babyface because people are thinking I’m going to turn. So every night they were waiting for me to turn on Bray and help out American Alpha. Those poor guys are the babyfaces, but I’m tagging in and people are going crazy and chanting “RKO!” and I’m beating up Jason Jordan and Chad Gable and they’re getting no sympathy. So as a performer, that sucks because I want the babyfaces to get sympathy. I want the crowd to blow a gasket when the babyfaces turn around and start beating me from pillar to post. But that wasn’t happening. And at first it would freak me out because you have a certain historic way that a match goes and that would get thrown out the window because you have a popular babyface with a heel team. That was fun to play with, you know, getting back to me having more fun than I’ve had in a while because it was a learning experience for me too.

IGN: There’s a really awesome Hall of Fame lineup this year what with Kurt Angle, Beth Phoenix, DDP, Rick Rude, and such. Is there any induction that you’re looking forward to seeing the most?

Orton: Well, I’d say until a few days ago, Kurt Angle was the guy who I was most curious to see get inducted this year. But a couple days ago, I heard that Jim Cornette is going to be given a live microphone and so I’m going to have a bag of popcorn, maybe a little flask of some good stuff in my breast pocket, and I’m going to sit back and listen to Jim Cornette and just cross my fingers that it’s as good as I think it can be. Because he is amazing on the mic, he doesn’t hold anything back, and I think it says a lot about WWE and whoever made that final decision — I’m sure it was Vince — to have Cornette induct the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express. Because there’s some bad blood there. I don’t know what it is. I know as far back as 17 years ago when I first signed there was some kind of weird backstage heat thing going on where Cornette never went up north and didn’t like interacting with the guys in the office. You never really knew what it was, though I’m sure if you did some digging you could find out. I’m not interested in that though, I just think it’s cool that he’s being allowed to come and induct these guys into the Hall of Fame. These guys who are both very deserving in their own right.

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