Over the course of the past week or so, there's been a lot of buzz online about the possibility of Randy Orton heading to All Elite Wrestling after his current WWE deal expires sometime next year. This has come about due to a few cryptic Tweets between Orton and Chris Jericho and while I don't remember them exactly, one of Jericho's responses was something along the line of "I'll see what I can do" while one of Orton's Tweets did mention something about being "Elite." So as you can imagine, it's got a lot of people talking and wondering about whether there's any potential of Randy Orton heading to AEW or if he and Jericho are just trolling.
There's also the possibility of Orton doing this as part of negotiating a new contract. There are rumors that Orton makes somewhere around $3 million per year and doesn't work anything close to a full time schedule anymore. Orton doesn't work a lot of house shows and, overall, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Orton wrestles 50 to 75 times per year. So, there's the notion that Orton is just sort of doing this to tease WWE that there's another fat wallet out there now who may just be interested.
Personally, I think Orton is mostly trolling as he and Jericho are notorious for doing stuff like this. At age 39, Orton is still in great shape, he's a big star and he'd be a major get for AEW. He's done everything there is to do in WWE, that's been the case really for about 10 years now when you get right down to it, so AEW would feel quite fresh. At the same time, Orton is such a well known "WWE guy" that I'm wondering if it might stir some kind of backlash among fans as this is sort of how it started in TNA all those years ago with TNA gobbling up every over the hill former star and/or trying to sign every star who'd even been the slightest bit relevant at any point in the previous 15 years or so that TNA started to lose its own identity. Also, Orton is someone who strikes me as kind of out of place in AEW as it's a haven for indie guys and as I alluded to, Orton is well known for taking to social media to blast the "indie style" of wrestling at any given time.
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Originally Posted by Jack-Hammer
