Technically, Randall Keith Orton wrestled in St. Louis, Missouri under his father Bob Orton Jnr. before he joined OVW, but given that he was there for a month in 2000, we figure he just scrapes into this list by a whisker. Although his parents tried to persuade him not to pursue a life as a wrestler, Orton was adamant. Hed screwed the pooch as a Marine, joining up after graduating high school, but being thrown out for going AWOL and disobeying orders. This was his next shot. Orton would remain in OVW, wrestling John The Prototype Cena amongst others, for just over a year until he was called up to the main roster in April 2002. He had a similar rocky start to Batista, playing a clean cut babyface (badly) until the first of several shoulder issues would have him sidelined for a few months. Just as they did with Roman Reigns years later, WWE made the mistake of insisting that the injured Orton deliver regular updates to an uninterested crowd on his road to recovery. The hostile reactions to the interruption to the program caused the company to turn him heel, and only a few months later, just as with Batista, Evolution would materialise to save his bacon. The rest is history: Randall Keith Orton, third generation wrestler, became the Legend Killer, who became the Apex Predator and the Viper: a weird, barely controllable sociopathic snake man (babyface or heel) and upper midcard/main event mainstay who can be relied upon to make classic match-ups with anyone on the roster.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
