Randy Orton spoke with Ariel Helwani this week to discuss his real life friendship with Matt Riddle and how it has evolved over the course of a few years.
Randy Orton describing the evolution of his real life friendship with Riddle:
“He’s a real life loveable dude. It’s so funny because I hated his guts at first,” Orton laughed. He came across as highly disrespectful. He never came up and said hi.”
“For two years, I would run into this guy. I never went out of my way to say hi, but I would see him, and you know, guys would come and say hi. His whole goal was to come up to WWE and be on the main roster and make a lot of money for him and the company.”
“That should be the goal to work with all these guys and be more mainstream than what NXT can provide. So I would think that you would show up to work and introduce yourself, ‘Hey man, Matt Riddle. Hopefully we can work together one day. I’m not the biggest wrestling fan, but I’ve done a lot of this, and now I see how cool wrestling is. I’m trying to play catch up. I’m 35 and I want to do this.’ There was none of that banter. It was just, headphones on, eyes glazed over,” Orton said.
“I walked by in Miami about two years into him being in NXT. We were at RAW. For the first time, I said, ‘Screw this. I’m going to introduce myself.’ I came up to him and said, ‘Ah, there he is.’ He looks at me, goes like that (he nods his head), and walks off. But that’s him. I’ll text him now, and he won’t respond, but that’s just him.”
“We started working together. I started seeing him interact with other people. He’s being smug over there to those guys, but that’s weird because they are close, so that’s just him. There’s guys like that. Dean Ambrose was like that. Like, who’s that guy, and then you find they are just a super weird guy. With Riddle, what you see is what you get.”
“Once I let the wall come down, me and him, you don’t have a lot of friends in this business, but I consider him a friend. We have a lot in common, which is so funny because the whole thing on TV is that we don’t have anything in common and we are so different, but in real life, we have a lot in common,” Orton shared.”
“When I’m out there in the ring and the red light is on, I’m feeling his energy and the people are feeling it. It’s a weird thing he’s got. He’s got something special. He’s a lot smarter than he lets on. He’s a sharp dude.”
“I think he’s lucky to have me there with him. I’m giving him the rub. I think that I’m even more lucky to have Riddle with me. I’m having a lot of fun out there. I’m smiling. I’m having a good time with this babyface run. I think that is directly related to him.”
Orton continued, “There’s a lot of reasons. He’s always in a good mood. That’s good for me. If I’m around negativity, you’re going to suck me down with you. I kind of match energy. Riddle has the energy. He gives it 110%.”
“His facials are amazing. When he gets excited, you don’t have to tell him that I need you to really be excited here, or you really need to let the fans see this or that. He instinctively knows a lot of things that a lot of guys that are new or are more green than others generally don’t have those instincts, and some of them never will, but he has them. I couldn’t say enough good things about Riddle, but I definitely was not a fan at first.”
Randy Orton and Matt Riddle are currently working together as RK-Bro and time will tell what Wrestlemania plans may be in place for them.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit “Ariel Helwani Meets” with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
