The Wrestling Observer Newsletter has offered more insight into the build up to the Randy Orton vs. Brock Lesnar SummerSlam match and how ‘The Viper’ essentially learned his fate when arriving at the arena that day.
Orton expected to have a legitimate main event match with one of WWE’s biggest stars but was told the bout was going to be booked to make Lesnar look as nasty as possible, and as we saw, ‘The Beast’ decimated Orton with such ferocity that the referee would stop the match. Lesnar achieved that by using an elbow to cut him open and it’s reported that Randy was told this could be pulled off without actually hurting him. Now considering Orton received 10 stitches to the head and a gigantic gash in his skull, that’s not really how the situation played out. He was hurt.
After the match, Orton then had to diffuse Chris Jericho backstage, who had gotten in a physical altercation with Lesnar over what happened during the match, and explain that the match was a ‘work’ and that he had agreed to it all.
The Observer also notes the following which is particularly interesting and paints a picture of Orton not being particularly happy with the events of that evening.
One person noted that Orton was told to do it, but wasn’t expecting it to be the way it was. He wasn’t going to complain publicly about it but also was never going to do that kind of a favor again and wasn’t particularly thrilled by it.
