Speaking of top-flight combat: Despite what you may have heard,
Orton is actually very good in the ring. Is he a Daniel Bryan–level technician? No. Does he have the match-calling instincts of Ric Flair or Shawn Michaels? No. But to call him anything other than a borderline-great wrestler is to misunderstand what wrestling is all about.
Orton is a physical freak. I'm not just talking about how he looks.
It's what he does. I know: Wrestling is a fake sport. But wrestling fans love real athletes — Brock Lesnar's MMA run, Mark Henry's strongman championships, Haku's bar fights.
Orton's athleticism ranks with the best of them. Just look at his RKO — it's a thing of beauty. A midair RKO against a flipping Evan Bourne doesn't just perform itself. The swaggering ease with which he tosses his opponents across the middle rope for the hangman DDT is really something. Literally every time he does his snap scoop powerslam I wonder how he pulled it off. That superplex he did to Daniel Bryan on Monday? That might have been the most beautiful superplex ever. Look how Orton climbs the ropes in the corner and balances effortlessly, extends Bryan to the highest point possible, and then bends his knees to cradle Bryan backward onto the mat. If he has underachieved — if he still does at times — that doesn't disqualify his physical abilities from being next-level. We should talk about Orton the way sports fans talk about Jabari Parker or Jadeveon Clowney.
He can do things nobody else can. In fact, one of the weird tics about Orton is that he was obsessed with doing crazy aerial maneuvers early in his career, but Arn Anderson told him to stop because he didn't need those moves to get over. Arn was right — he doesn't. But the fact that he can do them? Wow.
And he does the little things well. The way Orton stalks to the ring, the way he
poses on the ropes, the way he pounds the mat when he's angling for his finisher —
it all works. Even his limited vocabulary of facial expressions — soulless, murderous, petulant — is deployed in appropriate measure.
Orton's ring psychology is off the charts. As
Arune Singh, Orton fan and executive director of television communications at Marvel Entertainment, points out:
"I don't think all these chinlocks ('Rest holds' seems needlessly pejorative) are accidental. He doesn't want you cheering for his athleticism. He's not the guy you show to your friends to explain why wrestling is like a superhero story brought to life. He's ruthless and efficient in all his moves. Notice that as he's become a heel again, he's not slamming the mat the same way before an RKO and there's not the same flow to his 'Five Moves of Doom.' That's smart."
