WWE Stars Spent ‘Months’ Convincing WWE To Release Controversial Merch

WWE

Matt Riddle has revealed how the RK-Bro 420 T-shirt went from being a one-day-only deal to long-running merch in WWE.

As the team of RK-Bro, Randy Orton and Matt Riddle were paired together until the Viper’s eighteen-month absence from WWE.

Speaking to Chris Van Vliet on Insight about the RK-Bro T-shirt design, Riddle revealed:

“Dude, it took a lot of convincing [for WWE to create 4:20 merchandise]. But, I’ll tell you this, they’re not mad about it.

“They made quite a pretty penny on it and so did I and so did Randy [Orton] I would imagine.

“But, yeah, we were trying for months and months and then 4:20 came up, and now if you know Randy, Randy doesn’t like to advertise anything. Randy does his job and that’s his job. Unless he wants to do something, he’s not gonna do it, which, that’s why Randy’s so cool.

“So, we want this 4:20 shirt. WWE hits us up on 4/19, they go, ‘Randy, Riddle, we’re gonna do an RK-Bro 4:20 shirt. We’re only going to do a limited release, one day only.’

“Alright, they could’ve told us any other shirt, whatever. I probably would have shared it. Randy wouldn’t have shared it.

“Me and Randy texted each other separately from then and we go, ‘We’re sharing the hell out of this shirt. We are getting this over. We need this to sell.’ We wanted it, we needed it, we finally got what we wanted.

“We needed to make this happen. We got to let them know how much money there is, and literally, not even 16 hours into 4:20, we got a call. They’re like, ‘Oh, we’re going to keep the shirt going. We’re just gonna keep it going’ and even after Randy left because of his injury, they had the Bro 4:20 shirt which sold like hotcakes and the Bro 4:20 hats and everything else.”

Riddle was released by WWE in September 2023 with an unnamed WWE higher-up saying the star had “burned through too many chances“.

Orton has previously spoken about his back injury and recovery from surgery saying he’s “not going to take a day for granted”.

He returned at WWE Survivor Series in November 2023, teaming with Cody Rhodes, Jey Uso, Sami Zayn & Seth Rollins to defeat Drew McIntyre & Judgment Day (Damian Priest, Finn Balor, Dominik Mysterio & JD McDonagh).

Transcript from Post Wrestling.

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• 4:20
• RK-Bro
• Randy Orton
• Matt Riddle
• wwe

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