7 Strangest WWE Fandom Trends From The Internet
3. RKO Outta Nowhere
Of course Randy Orton has been at the top of the WWE card since he debuted and he's a fourteen time champion and third generation wrestler, but he's not exactly a funny guy. So how exactly did he become the most meme-able superstar in history?
The whole RKO Outta Nowhere mania began as a dig at Juventus’ Chilean midfielder Arturo Vidal in 2013. Vidal was mid-dribble when he appeared to fall over, absent of any interference from Real Madrid’s defense. The ref granted him a penalty kick much to the dismay of Madrid supporters.
Wrestling LAD posted a Vine with Orton throwing the RKO on Vidal during his fall around a year later. Two days later he had 1300 revines and 1200 likes. Around 2014 any time a video involving a fall got popular, you can bet you’d see Randy Orton giving them the old RKO. The Washington Post even did a piece on the trend.
The most viewed compilations of the RKO Vines on YouTube currently top around 12 million views. The best RKO related prank video has over 7 million views.
With 0 effort on the part of Orton or anyone at WWE-they did what months of story-lines and matches couldn’t-transformed Orton into something people liked to watch, smiled at, laughed at.