Triple H Credits Randy Orton For Returning From Major Injury
The return of another former WWE Champion got a lot of attention, but Randy Orton also made a huge comeback at Survivor Series.
In the main event of WWE Survivor Series in Chicago, Randy Orton was the fifth participant to enter the WarGames cage.
There was a storyline throughout the show that Orton might not show up, but show up he did as the tenth man in the match. Orton looked as muscular as ever as he destroyed The Judgment Day team with clotheslines, powerslams, and RKOs, of course. The biggest RKO came when JD McDonagh of The Judgment Day was launched from the top of the cage as Orton hit him with the patented RKO.
The 14-time WWE World Champion Randy Orton was on the winning team led by Cody Rhodes, Seth “Freakin” Rollins, Sami Zayn & Jey Uso as they defeated The Judgment Day’s Damian Priest, Finn Balor, Dominik Mysterio, JD McDonagh and Drew McIntyre, who was aligned with The Judgment Day for just one night.
For Orton, it was his first match since May 2022. Orton had major back surgery over the last year and it took a lot of rehabilitation for him to get back into in-ring shape.
Paul “Triple H” Levesque is a man who knows Orton very well from their time together in the Evolution stable in the mid-2000s along with a rivalry that saw them headline WrestleMania together. These days, Triple H is Orton’s boss as the WWE Chief Content Officer. At the post-Survivor Series press conference, Triple H spoke about Orton’s comeback match.
“Let’s talk about the return of Randy Orton. Just incredible. Randy is, JBL used to say it all the time, if you were going to design a WWE superstar, if you were going to build one from the ground up, you would build Randy Orton. I met Randy Orton when he was a kid. Worked with him when he was a kid.”
“Gave him a lot of slack because he was a kid, for a long, long time, and to see where he is now, to see that growth, so incredibly proud of him. To see where he is, not only as a performer, but a man, as a father, as a human being, just incredibly proud of Randy Orton.”
Randy Orton Went Through A “Rough Experience” Leading To WWE Return
As Triple H continued, he spoke about how difficult it is to come back from such a major injury like what Randy Orton came from.
“When you have the kind of injury that he had, where things are touch and go, I’ve been there, where they tell you you might never do this again. That’s a rough experience. To be able to fight back, what he went through, to be able to have what he had done and come back here tonight and have the moment that he had was awesome, and I’m so happy for him, to be able to come here, do what he did tonight and, as it being WarGames, the pressure off him a little bit. To come back and be able just be Randy Orton and do what he wants to do.”
“You have no idea what performers and athletes go through when they’ve been gone for a long period of time and they have to fight back through something like that. The tricks that your mind play on you, to wonder if anyone’s gonna care, to wonder if it’ll matter, to wonder if you still can do this. No matter how good you are, no matter how confident you are, that runs through your head.”
“So to get him out there tonight, blow the roof off this place in Chicago and have the moment that he did, awesome, and I’m incredibly happy for him.”
Next up for Randy Orton is a return to WWE Monday Night Raw in Nashville on November 27th.