10 Expectations Vs. Reality For WWE WrestleMania 35
7. AJ Styles Vs. Randy Orton
Expectation:
15 minutes of ***3/4 fun.
Expect a match built entirely around Randy Orton's RKO, from which, across their early 2017 SmackDown belter and their exchanges in this year's Elimination Chamber, Orton and AJ Styles extracted awesome drama. That 2017 match was ace; retaining any memory of a WWE TV offering is difficult, and yet AJ's springboard RKO fake-out remains vivid in its brilliance. It will take some doing to top that, but it's something firmly expected of the audience, and a challenge relished by the two competitors involved. Well, that can be written about AJ with some certainty.
Orton, however...
Reality:
The issue with expecting a match built entirely around Orton's RKO is that Orton is keenly, cynically aware of the power it holds. He knows that he can amble about lazily in the several minutes that too often act as a mere, tedious interlude ahead of it. A chinlock here, a chinlock there, Orton leaning far too heavily into the entitled figure the storyline has portrayed him as by casually running through his Garvin stomp routine. Nobody's gonna remember this sh*t, he mutters, and he's probably right.
A slightly lethargic and aimless 12 minutes, followed by the only three minutes that matter in this GIF world.