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Randy Orton: Has His Time Come"
August 8, 2004 by Ashley Daniels

For my first column, I have chosen to write about one of wrestlings fastest rising stars. Randy Orton. Randy made his first wwe televised debut on smackdown, defeating Hardcore Holly and since then has become more and more impressive. Now Randy is only eight days away from the biggest opportunity in his career, though a question which is on my mind is does he truely deserve it. I shall now state why I feel Randy Orton is not quite ready to be the World Heavyweight Champion.

Randy Orton is only 24 years old and if he wins the World Heavyweight Championship, he will officially be the youngest wrestler to have the honour of being the champ. If the wwe has taught me anything it is that history has a way of repeating itself. The Rock won his first Intercontinental Championship at the tender age of 25 and his first Heavyweight Championship at the age of 26. Now he makes rare appearances on wwe television. Jeff Hardy won his first Tag Team Championship at the age of 22 and his only Intercontinental Championship at 24, now he is no longer employed by the wwe. It is the same case with Brock Lesnar (the youngest WWE Champion) who won the championship at Summerslam 2002, on the other hand, he is no longer employed by the wwe. So what my arguement is, is that we do not know for sure if Randy Orton will be the next Brock Lesnar, and leave the wwe.

Point two, as to why I feel Randy Orton does not yet deserve the World Heavyweight Championship is because, I liked Randy Orton as the Intercontinental Champion seeing as Randy wore the belt with pride and in the process bought new meaning to the Intercontinental Championship.

In my opinion, the Intercontinental Championship is ment to be a stepping stone to becoming the World Heavyweight Champion, although I feel that Randy's jump in to the World title catagory is premature as he probably could have had a few more great reigns as Intercontinental Champion.

My third and final point about Randy Orton is that if he does win the World Heavyweight Championship come Summerslam. He would not have much more left to accomplish on Raw, unless he decides to pull a Triple H and win World title, after World title, after World title... which eventually becomes boring. I always thought Randy Orton will be similar to Shawn Michaels, gradually making his way to the top earning everyones respect in the process, which would probabaly make his Heavyweight championship win a lot more emotional and meanignful, and not like Brock Lesnar rushed in to superstardom.

I hope no one believes that I am trying to degrade Randy Orton as I feel he is one of the best wrestlers on Raw alongside; Benoit, Edge, Shelton Benjamin and Chris Jericho.

by Ashley Daniels ..

Kyle92187 wrote:
Nice article! I do agree. It isn't his time. He is still rising through the ranks. A main event feud is just what he needs to build his name. But he isn't ready for the main event title just yet! I also think he should win the tag team titles first and become like a RAW grand slam champion! (Ie: Benoit who has held the IC title, the tag team titles, and the current world heavyweight title) Well anyway, I enjoyed reading your article! I hope to see another one down the line! ;-)

l biggins wrote:
I know this isn't a very educated reply to your article, which I did enjoy, but at WWE Vengeance 2004, the Randy Orton Vs. Edge IC Championship match was the weakest match on the card. Both men were equally un-impressive. I will however be watching Orton so I can see if he does deserve the World Heavyweight Championship.

Justin Dean wrote:
You are correct - Orton does not yet deserve, or indeed need to be the World Heavyweight Champion. This to me smacks of desperation by the WWE. Yes, he is a truly gifted wrestler, a great physique (although not much bigger than a cruiserweight!), and a long term talent (ala Shawn Michaels).

Maybe Vince is panicking, and feels that he has to grasp the moment to create a bit of history and controversy, but to flourish, the WWE needs to have a worthy, well dug in Champion. Look at the excitement caused by Chris Benoits slow rise, year after year, taking knock after knock, then realising the dream in dramatic style. That meant so much to the real wrestling fan, and was a real piece of drama.

Randy Orton has it all, and there is a realistic danger, like you suggested, that he will have achieved it all at a tender age, people will get bored of him, then he will disappear. In my personal opinion, the WWE needs to go back to the Federation Years in terms of longer feuds, wrestlers clawing their way to the top of the pile, and less PPV's. This way, a real gem like Randy Orton can spend the next few years having good battles, a few more IC reigns, and then hit the big one at around age 30 as a true legend.

And whilst im here, can i take the opportunity to say that id like to see a real big, intimidating, awesome heel to be the next Champion. So, give him some extra wrestling lessons, inject a bit of APA-style badness, and give Mark Henry a shot!! Thats upset y'all aint it" See ya...

Steve Gibbons wrote:
Good article, with a couple of interesting points raised, but I need to reply to 1 biggins, whose response proclaims the Randy Orton-Edge match from Vengeance to be "the weakest match on the card". How can you possibly say this about a card which featured a dumb brawl with a weak finish (Kane vs. Matt Hardy), a "thrown together" tag team match with a DQ finish (Flair/Eugene vs. La Resistance), and a criminal misuse of Chris Jericho, jobbed out to that jacked up freak Batista. In contrast to these abominations, the Randy Orton vs Edge match was fantastically booked. A quick start that settled into a nice, slow build and peaked with severeal exciting near falls and a great clean finish. If only the WWE would give us more matches like this! Randy Orton is indeed a great talent, an interesting blend between the "sports entertainment" of the 21st century and old school wrestling, and he deserves to be in the main event slot. I don't think he deserves the big strap just yet, though, for most of the same reasons as in Ashley's original article.

Lil' Theater wrote:
Well, Steve, I disagree with you completely. You do realise that the whole match was basically Edge doing Shoulder Blocks to Orton" It was definitely not the best match on the card, in my view. Near falls don't make a so far poor match good, you do realise that" Speaking of my view, do you know which match I thought was the best" It was left out of your list of matches, as was one other. The one I'm talking about is the Women's Number 1 Contender match between Victoria and Molly Holly. I saw better wrestling in that match than in the Edge/Randy Orton match. There was Vaulting Body Presses, Moonsaults, RVD Monkey Flips, not to mention good mat wrestling. It was short (as usual in Women's Matches) and sweet. I was waiting for that IC Championship match to end as soon as possible.

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