“No Wonder Everybody Hated Me”: Randy Orton Shares His Treatment Backstage Because of His Father’s Reputation

It’s not easy being the star-kid. The whole experience is different when a child follows their celebrity parent’s footsteps into the industry. This is something WWE Superstar Randy Orton learnt rather quickly once he stepped inside the WWE locker room.

When Orton first arrived at the locker room, he had just left his teen years behind. As a result, he was almost always the kid in the locker room. However, no one quite picked on him like they picked on the other new guys, all because of Bradshaw.

During a conversation on Out of Character with Ryan Satin, The Viper revealed why Bradshaw always had his back.

“My father took Bradshaw on his very first tour of Japan back in the early 90s. And, took care of Bradshaw. Took him under his wing and had his back. Bradshaw, of course, the way it works, never forgot that and me being Bob Orton’s kid, Bradshaw never gave me any sh*t. He was always one of those guys, man, those local guys, those new guys, they’d come and he’d give ’em a hard time […] Nothing wrong. But, just f’ing with the guy, you know, just guys being guys. You need a little bit of that, but I was never a target because of my dad… Such a lucky little, you know, a**hole. No wonder everybody hated me.”

Even if Bradshaw hadn’t looked out for him, it’s unlikely that Superstars would have picked on Bob Orton Jr.‘s kid.

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Randy Orton had to work hard to earn the locker room’s respect

Now, just because no one picked on Orton doesn’t mean they respected him. Considering he was a kid with attitude, it took him quite a while to understand how respect works in the industry.

While in conversation with Ryan Satin, he revealed that he got mixed with the wrong crowd and made some poor decisions. As a result, he kept having close calls in WWE, and essentially being a “dumb kid”.

However, as he grew up, he realized how the business worked. He changed his behaviour, his approach, and soon enough became a respectable veteran in the company.

Today, Randy Orton is a 16-time world champion who holds the record for most WWE Raw matches and most WWE PPV matches.

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