WWE

With Randy Orton now being on WWE’s sidelines for 13 months with serious back injury issues, the in-ring future of the 14-time world champion is looking increasingly uncertain.

The nature of Orton’s injury has perhaps been partly caused by Orton’s lengthy use of the RKO finishing move, one where landing hard on your back is unavoidable.

Interestingly, Orton’s name arose on a recent episode of The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy podcast, where AEW star Matt Hardy was discussing he and his brother Jeff’s pair of matches with The Young Bucks in ROH in 2017 and later at AEW Double or Nothing 2022 and how his body had changed in that time.

Hardy revealed that in that time he had been working on improving his balance and has changed his move-set in response to injury woes, something that he discussed with Orton in a recent talk he had with the injured WWE star.

Hardy said:

“Yes, it has, it has (our bodies changed between ROH Ladder match in 2017 & Double or Nothing 2022 versus Young Bucks) and there’s some things…

“Once again, it’s very weird, as you get older, it’s just like you have to change things to keep your body in a certain condition and I’m constantly in a process of changing things.

“I actually had a lot of people that complimented the stuff at Double or Nothing and I’ve been doing a lot of balance training, as crazy as that sounds.

“But I’ve been doing balance training because just like, I had a long conversation with Randy Orton.

“He was talking about how messed up his body was just from doing the RKO over and over and over again and you know, I told him, ‘You can only imagine how my hips and lower back feel after all those leg drops over all the years’.

“But he was just talking about how bad his balance was, that he didn’t realize and that kind of got me thinking and I’ve done more balance training than anything else recently and I feel like it’s helped me on my movement and whatnot and hopefully my flexibility.”

While Orton himself has not addressed his future, his father Bob Orton recently did and revealed that doctors have advised Orton not to return to the ring.

We continue to wish Randy Orton the best in his ongoing recovery.

Transcript courtesy of POST Wrestling

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• Matt Hardy
• Injury
• Randy Orton
• AEW
• wwe

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