Randy Orton "Had A Very Hard Time" Working With The Fiend In WWE
Randy Orton on his "hard" feud with Bray Wyatt's alter ego, being burnt to a crisp & more.
Randy Orton has confessed that working with Bray Wyatt's 'Fiend' character in 2020 and 2021 was a "hard" time for him.
Speaking on The Ringer Wrestling Show, Orton said that while he always tries to do his best with whatever WWE creative gives him, he had a tough time getting through this particular feud (h/t Fightful):-
"Rolling with the punches is something that I realized, more recently than not, if I just accept that I'm out of control of some of these situations and I'm talking about the business right now, if I just take what they give me and do it to the best of my ability...I was doing Fiend stuff a year ago. That was hard."
The storyline in question commenced in October 2020, when Orton entered his rivalry with Bray Wyatt and Alexa Bliss. The first act closed on a Firefly Inferno match at TLC 2020 two months later, which ended, ultimately, in 'The Fiend' being burnt to a crisp. Soon after, Bliss hurled a fireball at Randy's face in an act of revenge.
This, too, was hard for Orton:-
"Some of that was rough. They put me in the burn mask one week and the next week I'm out of it and my skin healed. It's tough. Then you go to, who you would imagine you go to when you have a gripe, and go, 'Hey, I can't do this. Aren't they gonna....' [Vince impression], 'Just do it. It's going to work.' 'Okay.' Roll with the punches. You go out there and do your best job."
Randy continued, speaking on his efforts at trying to make the fantastical material feel like something the audience can invest in:-
"Even though I'm lighting a dead guy on fire and he's the babyface...I had a very hard time trying to make that real, but I feel like I did a good enough job to where even though it was a little cringe-worthy for some people, because I really tried to believe I was going through this, I think it helped people buy into it a little bit more while we were suspending that reality and trying to make them believe like they would if they were watching the most recent Halloween movie. They want to believe and be entertained so, the more I can accept that and make it real and make it something that I'm feeling and not just words that some 22-year-old writer wrote on paper for me, if I believe it and make it mine, I can get them to believe. That's what kind of changed with my promos."
The feud wrapped at WrestleMania 37 in April 2021, when Wyatt was defeated in a few short minutes after a distraction from the goop-dribbling Bliss. This was Bray's last WWE match prior to his shocking release from the company that July.