One of the most iconic finishing moves in the world of professional wrestling is the RKO. As the owner of the maneuver Randy Orton likes to call it, they have become the three most dangerous letters in Sports Entertainment.
Recently, while speaking on the Impaulsive Podcast, hosted by Logan Paul, The Viper revealed how the RKO was invented.
“So… Did you (Logan Paul) ever meet John Lauranitus? So he was head of talent relations when… For the majority of my career. He used to do a move called the Ace Crusher. Very very similar to the RKO. Diamond Dallas Page, who I’m sure you’re familiar with, he did the Diamond Cutter. Both those moves inspired me and in one way or another for me to come up with the RKO. So I needed a move that I could do to everybody. That I could do to you know, Rey Mysterio, Omos, or… You know, I wanted to do that finishing move to everybody. And that was the best choice,” Randy Orton said.
Randy Orton had multiple surgeries to fix his shoulders
While speaking on the same podcast episode, the Legend Killer mentioned that he is unable to lift Superstars and carry them on their shoulders for doing Powerbombs or anything of that sort. The reason behind that is that he had multiple shoulder injuries during the early days of his career and thus he doesn’t want to take that risk anymore.
“And essentially what it was is, I blew my shoulders out earlier in my career. I’ve had three shoulder operations. So if I… You can go back and very rarely will you ever see me pick a guy up. Like… If you look in the last ten years, other than like a Rey Mysterio or a Dom, I don’t pick guys up. I don’t do power moves. It’s just me, cuz I don’t need to do it. So I could pick up a guy and slam him. My shoulders are healthy and fine. But when I blew ‘em out early on, in my head I got it to where, ‘Okay, I got to protect my shoulders.’ So I go way overboard in protecting my shoulders. Because, you know, I don’t want to be on the shelf with another shoulder injury. But I know hat I don’t need to do it.”
Given the fact that Orton said his shoulders are healthy, would you like to see the Viper powerbomb wrestlers in the future?
