Randy Orton and Matt Riddle dropped the Raw Tag Team Titles to The Usos during an episode of SmackDown in 2022, and Orton then took a lengthy hiatus from WWE due to injury. Ultimately Orton spent 18 months sitting on the sidelines, but he made his triumphant return to the ring during the main event at Survivor Series on Saturday night.
Now that The Viper is back in action there are a lot of questions that still need to be answered. WWE has confirmed that Orton will be appearing on Raw this week, but there’s a lot of speculation regarding his future as it was reported that doctors advised him not to return to the ring following his back fusion surgery.
A video of Randy Orton walking backstage after the main event has surfaced online, and the video shows Orton teasing that he plans to wrestle for another 10 years.
Randy Orton singled 10 more years before he went backstage after #SurvivorSeries last night pic.twitter.com/Ui3uUizoq4
— CrispyWrestling (@CrispyWrestlin) November 26, 2023
This seems to line up with what Orton said during an interview back in January of 2022 when he stated that he hoped to wrestle for at least another 9 years. Of course at the time he made that statement he likely didn’t think he would be missing 18 months of in ring competition.
“I’m 41. By the time I’m 50, I think I’m done. But I’m not like, I’ll do auditions every once in a while, but I almost only do them because my wife says ‘oh do them, because what if you don’t? Then you’ll wonder what if you did.’ So I do auditions here and there, crossing my fingers that I don’t get a callback because I love what I do. I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to have to stop, because of my body.
“So I’ve taken it upon myself to make sure I’m doing everything I can on the daily that physically I’m able to continue. But if it was up to me, and I knew physically it wouldn’t be a problem, I’d say I’d wrestle until I’m 50 years old. And I would go out and have that last match when I’m 50 and be able to say I did it on my own terms. That’s 9 years from now. But I don’t see an end to my career any time soon. I’d like to continue to go.”
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