6 Worst Things Randy Orton’s Character Has Ever Done

Randy Orton is a bad man. Or at least, the character that he portrays on television is. After all, being nicknamed after a snake is hardly the kind of comparison based on good behaviour.

Over the course of his 15 years in WWE, Orton’s been a part of some of the most villainous angles and storylines of the modern PG era. Even when he’s supposedly being cast as the babyface, as he is right now in his feud with Bray Wyatt, this guy just can’t help himself from resorting to antics that range from underhanded to downright heinous.

In a strange kind of way, following a kind of logic that could only crop up in a world as weird as professional wrestling, these misdemeanours have often made him even more endearing to audiences.

But to borrow from a certain CEO of SpaceX, when we boil things down to the most fundamental truths, given some of Orton's past shenanigans, it could easily be argued that he should perhaps be spending his weekend in a jail cell as opposed to a wrestling ring in the co-main event of WrestleMania…

Though the move’s since been banned due to “concussion awareness” (which, by the way, is never a great precursor with which to begin), Randy Orton had at one point made a habit of punting other people in the side of the head.

Now, the latter part of that sentence sounds bad for a couple of reasons.

First, kicking people in the head isn’t an approach that’s going to make you many friends. In fact, the way it was presented in WWE, it was one of the most barbaric moves in anybody’s arsenal on the entire roster.

Not only that, but this was indeed a habit of Orton’s. Far from being a one-off, heat of the moment thing, Orton was walloping people on a nightly basis, with his list of victims including a 61-year-old Dusty Rhodes, a non-wrestling businessman who also doubled as his real-life boss, and perhaps most reprehensibly, John Cena’s father—a man who had been innocently watching at ringside until Orton hauled him over the barricade and levelled his right boot into the side of his head.

Don't worry, though, sometimes Orton didn't do it on purpose: he was only listening to those voices in his head.