Randy Orton suffered a concussion, which was hidden by WWE and all concerned, in his 8/21 SummerSlam match with Brock Lesnar from taking the hard elbows to the forehead that busted him up.
Orton still wasnt able to be cleared to compete and missed his Backlash match with Bray Wyatt. He did work his first match since the injury the next night on a house show in Fairfax, VA, where he teamed with John Cena against Wyatt & Erick Rowan. But in that match, Cena did almost all the wrestling, and Orton was limited to a hot tag. Orton had his leg all taped up to sell the angle done at the PPV. He took no offensive moves from his opponents, and only took one bump. But he did deliver his RKO finisher, a relatively safe move but still a bump, both in doing a run-in at Backlash and for the finish on Wyatt in Fairfax. It is not clear if he was cleared medically to compete the next day or the decision was made, similar to the last several matches of Daniel Bryans career in the U.K., to just have him work a finish and do one big move. He also did only an RKO on Erick Rowan at the Smackdown tapings on 9/13 in Philadelphia.
Orton is still advertised for the 9/24 house show in Chicago with Lesnar.
This entire situation opened up a hornets nest of problems. The first is, with the benefit of hindsight, the decision to have Orton sit and take the live shots to the head makes no sense in this day and age. Older wrestlers will note that planned hard way juice, while not a regular occurrence, was also not a foreign concept in wrestling in another era. Usually the hard ways were more to deliver a black eye or heavy bruising that would be visual on television, giving the sense of reality to the program and for building returns. In this case, since Lesnar had no high profile dates, just the 9/24 house show in Chicago that isnt even likely to be promoted outside the market, there was really no follow-up. If anything, it appeared the main follow-up was going to be Lesnar with Shane McMahon (which also hasnt been mentioned in storyline on any show the past two weeks) and not with Orton. Orton did no strong promo challenging Lesnar, and if anything, treated the beating as an Oh well, and Lesnar hasnt even been back on television since.
In this case, the idea was to end SummerSlam with confusion, and having people wonder what was and wasnt real. And that goal was accomplished. Vince McMahon created a scenario where people didnt really know what happened. Sure, deep down few thought Lesnar shot on Orton. It was more a question as to was Orton accidentally injured and did they stop the match early, or was that the scripted ending. And since nobody in the ring but Orton and Lesnar (and likely Paul Heyman outside it) knew the answer, the officials didnt react in a normal fashion, leading some in the audience to wonder if something went wrong. People did leave the building confused, and a lot of them leaving the building felt they got an unsatisfying ending, although pro wrestling sometimes has to do unsatisfying endings as part of its storytelling and building future matches. Did it build Lesnar into a bigger monster? Perhaps so. It didnt do Orton any favors, but hes established long enough where it didnt hurt him either.
Fans, and even media, didnt fully understand what they had just seen because it didnt look like standard pro wrestling. If youre going to do blood, a blade job is safer, but its also harder to defend because with a blade job, the promoter ordered a guy to cut his forehead with a razor blade. While for long-time pro wrestling fans, thats just standard for the business, for sponsors and people who arent fans of another era, it sounds barbaric. Yes, it is far less barbaric than what was done, but the idea was to give plausible desirability that the rare heavy blood was just an accidental of hard physical activity as opposed to something actually planned out. The idea was that only a few would know, and perhaps the only reason the full story got out was a combination of just how bloody it was, and the backstage situation with Lesnar and Chris Jericho.
But the business is filled with risky physicality. Concussions happen. Injuries are frequent. Because Orton was injured, the scenario comes across far worse than if it had gone as planned, but even as planned, the risk was very different from the usual risks of pro wrestling.
The second stage of this is impossible to defend. The WWE was aware Orton had a concussion, and covered it up. Orton, likely to protect the company, also downplayed his injuries, even to friends and co-workers who were not aware of this. He was pulled from house shows, but was at television and kept from anything physical.
However, the WWE was promoting Orton vs. Wyatt the entire time. The company knows full well that the time line for recovery from a concussion is impossible to predict. It could be a few days. It could be a few weeks. It could be a few months. There is no way to defend the company for promoting a PPV match with a concussed wrestler when they had no way at all of knowing whether hed be able to perform. If theyd have gone on television and at least told the situation, that its touch and go and hes hoping to wrestle, it would be one thing. The fact is the scenario with Wyatt vs. Kane was something planned as a backup for some time, so they were fully aware from the start. Worse, after he was checked out before Backlash that day, and it was ruled that he would not be able to do the match, the WWE not only hid that from the audience, but continued to heavily promote the match on social media hours after the reports were already out that he was off the show, as well as during the pregame show.
The storyline created was that early in the PPV, they showed Wyatt slamming a door on Ortons ankle to injure him to where he couldnt wrestle. Kane was the replacement. It was made into a no DQ match. At the finish, Orton showed up and delivered an RKO on Wyatt to lead to Kane getting the pin.
According to one doctor who is a concussion expert and some wrestlers who know the bump, they questioned allowing a wrestler not cleared to deliver an RKO.
Bret Hart, whose career for all real purposes ended due to a concussion, said, Absolutely, he shouldnt take any falls. The impact of any bump will pose problems. The brain is usually swollen and cant be banged about.
While WWE can defend itself for usage of the Impact testing of Dr. Joseph Maroon as its guideline, and other sports use it as well, its well known in football how to cheat on those tests. Thats not saying Orton did, but there may be better systems to use. A lot of that becomes political in the sense WWEs head of medical is the guy who was at the forefront of the program they use. But it does feel like WWE may be behind on the curve on the nature of its testing. Even so, there is obviously something, if not many things wrong with how this was handled.
