Randy Orton looks back on his time away from the ring.
14-time world champion Randy Orton missed well over a year after he and Matt Riddle lost the Raw Tag Team Championship to The Usos in May 2022, as he was sidelined due to a back injury. He had spinal fusion surgery, and his future was up in the air.
Speaking with Bill Apter for Sportskeeda WrestleBinge, Randy Orton was asked about his recovery and whether there was a time that he thought that he would not be returning to the ring.
“Oh yeah. I had top neurologists telling me that, you know what, you use a great career, you have a life after wrestling, and you want to be comfortable. You don’t want to be in pain the rest of your life. We’re gonna fix your back, but you’re gonna have to stop wrestling. The six months that I was out, I had that in the back of my head, and it was tough. It was mentally very challenging, and I didn’t really know what the future held for me. But I was able to find a couple doctors that had done the exact surgery that I needed on some MMA guys that went back to the octagon, competed and were successful and had longer careers. So I knew that these were the doctors that I needed to have put me under and go under the knife with," Randy Orton said.
Orton returned to WWE at WWE Survivor Series 2023, and he has been wrestling regularly ever since. He will face Tama Tonga in the King of the Ring semifinals on the May 24 episode of WWE SmackDown.
Kevin Owens recently said that Randy Orton was exactly what a veteran should be. Check out his comments here.
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