Randy Orton Retweets Rip Rogers Bashing Indy Wrestling, Other Wrestlers Join In On Controversy

Randy Orton isn’t overly active on social media. He retweets often about his family, and shares various memes, but doesn’t usually chime in with original tweets of his own commenting on issues in the world of wrestling. However, he recently gave some brief thoughts on the independent scene by agreeing with a controversial Rip Rogers tweet. Now, others in the industry are reacting to what was written.

It all started with Canadian wrestler Daniel “D-Man” Parker tweeting out a screencap on what he thinks about indy wrestling at the moment.

“Every indy wrestling match now: handshake, drawn out move exchange, this is awesome chant, strike exchange, dive, no sell Indy strongstyle, dive, more strikes, no sells, dive, flippy floppy sequence, dive, hit everyone with each other’s finishers, then Humpty Dumpty we all fall down. Fight forever chant, rinse and repeat until every move is useless and means nothing, dive…”

Rip Rogers — who wrestled in the NWA and WCW, and trained wrestlers in OVW — passed it along on his Twitter feed. Eventually, it was retweeted by Randy Orton (who Rogers helped train). He merely responded with “…..dive.”

That seemed to pick things up a bit, as a bunch of fans joined onboard to either heckle Orton (quite a few pointed out his propensity to dish out chinlocks) or agree with him. Many also took shots at Rogers. Soon, other wrestlers in the industry gave their thoughts as well. Current Impact Wrestling star Eddie Kingston quickly jumped in.

Fellow Impact wrestler Eric Carter III, or EC III, sided with Rogers on his criticism of the indy scene (keep in mind Carter is currently playing a heel on TV, so perhaps he was playing into that).

I wish I wrote this.

— ecIII (@therealec3) May 13, 2017

Will Ospreay seemed dismissive of the original tweet, as he pointed out that he’s currently doing quite nicely for himself on the independent scene.

Yeah…….but I'm having fun & making money so I'm happy………dive https://t.co/0qYe9KajTv

— ???? ??????? • ????????? (@WillOspreay) May 13, 2017

Rogers responded to Ospreay telling him he did “stupid s*it” when he was younger too and that the young wrestler will someday “get it.” Ospreay then responded to that with a series of tweets, pointing out that he currently has deals with Ring of Honor and NJPW. He said that he does respect Rogers, though, and hopes he isn’t coming across as rude.

Eventually, Parker himself returned and made note of Orton liking his comment.

This was certainly a curious move of Orton to make publicly. After all, it was sure to upset a lot of fans (which it did), and it clashes with his current babyface persona.

Perhaps the bigger issue, though, is that it opens himself up to criticism for never having to work the independent scene to make a living. Randy’s father is “Cowboy” Bob Orton, a man who played a role at the inaugural WrestleMania and is a WWE Hall of Famer. His grandpa is Bob Orton, a well-respected and accomplished wrestler from the territory days. Because of this, Randy only trained in St. Louis for a month before his pedigree and look landed him in OVW.

What’s also a bit strange is that on WWE’s current roster, much of the top talent spent years in the indy world before ever making it to the major leagues: Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, A.J. Styles, Samoa Joe, Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose, and many others had to cut their teeth in front of small crowds and little pay. In order to make a name for themselves, many felt they had to resort to daredevil maneuvers.

We’ll see if Orton provides any further commentary on the matter, or if he’s one-and-done with the issue and moves on. No matter what, he certainly helped get people talking about the state of the current independent wrestling scene.

[Featured Image by WWE]