Randy Orton made his big return to WWE at the Survivor Series premium live event in November of last year, but prior to that he had been sitting on the sidelines for 18 months due to a back injury. The Viper had to undergo spinal surgery and following the surgery there was a lot of talk about whether or not Orton would ever return to the ring.

The former WWE Champion recently spoke to Bill Apter of Sportskeeda’s WrestleBinge about the process that he went through while discussing the injury with doctors, and he also shared some insight into his mindset after being told he would have to stop wrestling.

“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 will be in action on Friday Night SmackDown this week when he faces off against Tama Tonga in the semifinals of the King of the Ring tournament.

Stay tuned for updates.

H/T Fightful