WWE’s Randy Orton Selects His Favorite RKO Ever
Randy Orton thinks one legendary RKO stands out above the rest.
The RKO has been Randy Orton’s finishing move for over 20 years. It’s a move that Diamond Dallas Page popularized in the 1990s as the Diamond Cutter. After DDP retired as a wrestler in the 2000s, he gifted the move to Orton, who made it even more famous than when DDT did it.
When Orton does the RKO (his birth name is Randy Kenneth Orton), the move takes on a slightly different twist due to how high he jumps when he delivers it.
Over the years, Orton’s ability to hit the RKO “out of nowhere” has helped it become one of the most iconic WWE finishers ever.
In a WWE YouTube video, Randy Orton was asked to rank five famous RKOs from his career blindly: Hulk Hogan on a car, countering Seth Rollins’ stomp, John Cena through a table, Evan Bourne doing a Shooting Star Press and Nia Jax in the Royal Rumble.
Orton’s top 5 list looked like this:
1. Evan Bourne
2. Seth Rollins
3. Hulk Hogan
4. Nia Jax
5. John Cena
Randy Orton Knows The RKO Is All About Timing
The legendary RKOs were shown to Orton in a specific order. The RKO on Bourne occurred on the July 12, 2010 edition of Raw. It wasn’t even during a match. It was a post-match angle that saw Bourne try to attack Orton, and he went for his Air Bourne move off the top, which was a Shooting Star Press. However, Orton was ready for it, and he countered the SSP with perhaps the most iconic RKO of them all.
Orton explained why he feels the RKO on Bourne is the best of them all.
“So I’m gonna say.. this is probably the most famous one I’ve done. This would be.. might be tied for one. But I think I’m going to go with one on this. Oh, and I have to give him props because it was all him. He can put that shooting star press anywhere. Hitting these guys with an RKO out of nowhere or out of the air, it’s all about the timing.
So I think because of the timing, it’s hard to say because it’s this one and another one that I’m assuming you’re going to show me next. would be tied for one in my opinion. I’m gonna go with one only because this was the first time that I did anything crazy like that with the RKO.”
Over the past month, Randy Orton has dropped John Cena numerous times with RKOs, including on the May 9th edition of SmackDown. That’s because Orton will challenge Cena for the Undisputed WWE Title at Backlash on May 10th in St. Louis, which just so happens to be Orton’s hometown.