After being ousted from Evolution by a jealous and gold-hungry Triple H in the fall of 2004, Randy Orton needed to catch fire.
He was already a made man, following his critically-acclaimed hardcore match with Cactus Jack at Backlash and winning the World Heavyweight Championship at SummerSlam.
Similarly, The Undertaker was coming off his return to the Deadman persona at WrestleMania XX, his 2004 culminating in a program with then-WWE Champion JBL.
Being the locker room veteran, and with his WrestleMania undefeated streak only becoming a spoken-of feature in the last couple of years, Undertaker would need a credible challenger to stake their claim on his yard.
Randy Orton and The Undertaker
On his Something to Wrestle podcast, Bruch Prichard confirms the long-standing rumor that longtime producer and agent Michael Hayes was first to point out that Undertaker’s record at WrestleMania was spotless, allowing for it to be challenged for in the same way that a championship would be.
Off the back of the announcement that his father, “Cowboy” Bob Orton, would be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame over WrestleMania 21 weekend, Randy took to the ring on the March 7 episode of RAW.
He recalled his father’s advice to “do something unique,” which led to him desiring to take his “Legend Killer” moniker one step further.
The younger Orton challenged The Undertaker to an inter-promotional match at WrestleMania 21, asserting that legend would become myth, before laying out then-general manager Eric Bischoff with an RKO. The Undertaker would accept the challenge on the subsequent SmackDown!
Though billed as a marquee match for the Show of Shows, this was not the first televised bout between the two. That would be on the May 28, 2002 episode of SmackDown!
The Undertaker was the WWE Undisputed Championship run and Orton had just been called up from Ohio Valley Wrestling.
Following the match, Undertaker was accused by Vince McMahon of giving the new prospect too much offense, and much of Orton’s performance in the match was edited from the final broadcast in order to make Undertaker look better.
How A Legend Killer Tried To End What Wasn’t Dead!
In talking to Vince, Undertaker retorted, “Aren’t you trying to get new guys over?” The man who claimed the ring as his yard was facilitating the growth of others, despite what was left on the cutting room floor.
How prophetic these words would be, as some three years after their first encounter, The Undertaker would again help Randy Orton build his own legacy, making a legend of the “Legend Killer.”
Orton was recently ousted from Evolution, earmarked for success and already with reigns as Intercontinental and World Heavyweight Champion to his name.
Though he would later admit that he wasn’t ready for the latter the first time around. Now out from under the wings of his adopted mentor Triple H and his “road dad” Ric Flair, the prospect Orton was set to make a mark on his own merit.
The build to WrestleMania 21 would also see Orton turn heel, as he slapped Undertaker during the contract signing on the March 17 episode of SmackDown! before laying out his on-screen girlfriend Stacy Keibler with an RKO.
The former of these two attacks earned Orton a receipt that he would call “something for the ages” in a later interview with ESPN. “Cowboy” Bob would even get involved, begging off The Undertaker in what would end up as a ruse to allow Randy to get the jump on his opponent before the big night.
While Orton would be unsuccessful in beating The Streak, a chokeslam reversal into an RKO did make for a convincing close call, and perhaps the first true close call for The Streak, to say nothing of the “outta nowhere” move that it would become, memes and all.
Neither that nor a cast shot from the elder Orton could put Undertaker away. Hubris got the better of Randy, as his attempt to steal the Tombstone Piledriver was countered into one of Undertaker’s own, putting the Legend Killer away and raising The Streak to 13-0.
It almost didn’t go according to plan, as Orton would later admit on Broken Skull Sessions to skipping rehearsals the day before the show, as well as winging his Hall of Fame induction speech for his father that night.
This would be one of many stories of a younger Randy Orton’s unprofessionalism, an issue he has since worked out and more than made up for in the years since.
While WrestleMania often provides the end of rivalries, this clash was only the beginning, as the two would go on to clash again at SummerSlam after Orton cost Undertaker in a Fatal Four Way for what was going to be the SmackDown! Championship, though now Orton was officially on the blue brand.
In the SummerSlam rematch, “Cowboy” Bob was a factor once again, though this time he was disguised as a ringside fan complete with latex makeup.
This match would run longer than the WrestleMania original (around 17 minutes compared to the first clash’s 14), though it would be received less warmly (2.75 stars to the first’s 3.25 stars).
The sins of the father led to the handicap casket match at No Mercy, which itself led to The Ortons locking Undertaker in the box before setting it on fire, a mirror image of Kane doing the same at the 1998 Royal Rumble.
The preceding episodes of SmackDown! would involve The Ortons wheeling caskets down to ringside, and while the first time involved a mannequin of The Undertaker, the second time around would be all too real.
This would also see “Rowdy” Roddy Piper return to WWE, putting the elder Orton down with his signature sleeper hold in a tag team match on SmackDown!
Despite the visuals and the star power involved, the match at No Mercy only managed 2.25 stars. What fans may not know is that Bruce Prichard nearly had to intervene during the ignition of the casket, ready to pull Randy aside and instruct him to bring the “uncomfortably long” lighting sequence to its natural conclusion.
Randy would go on to be the sole survivor in the cross-promotional Survivor Series elimination match the following month, though The Undertaker would return after emerging from a flaming casket, leading to a lasting visual of The Undertaker which would sear into the memories of fans.
This was a lemons from lemonade situation, though, as Orton was a last-minute replacement for the recently-departed Eddie Guerrero, who passed away just over a week before the event.
In a segment that would further build to the blowoff, Orton commandeered Guerrero’s lowrider, which had been brought to the ramp in tribute to the deceased, and backed the car, Undertaker slumped over the back seat, through the set in an attempt to “kill” The Undertaker.
The grand finale would be in a bloody Hell in a Cell match at Armageddon, in what may be one of the last classic Hell in a Cell matches.
What was less revolutionary and more horrifying was the fact that Bob Orton had contracted hepatitis C, a bloodborne illness, as a teenager, and Ruthless Aggression-era Hell in a Cell matches mean everyone involved bleeds.
Allegedly, then-talent relations head John Laurinitis knew of Orton’s condition but approved of the color, though this would end in the Cowboy’s termination from WWE after the fact.
It is nothing short of a miracle that The Undertaker did not end up ill from this gross negligence on multiple peoples’ ends.
Between this oversight and the recent passing of Eddie Guerrero, plans for a Randy Orton push towards the World Heavyweight Championship were axed, and the elder Orton was let go, not to be seen again on television for nearly five years.
Randy would go into a program that would lead him into SmackDown’s WrestleMania main event, a Triple Threat for the aforementioned championship, while The Undertaker would go into another casket match at WrestleMania, this time against Mark Henry.
While earlier iterations were “coffin” matches, newer versions featured a casket, hence the name change, as coffins bear an angular shape, as opposed to the rectangular box with a hinged lid that a casket has. Words do mean things, after all.
According to Orton himself during the aforementioned Broken Skull Sessions interview, Bob Orton thought that he was blackballed at one point and “New York would never have” Randy.
He also confessed to being green enough to “barely make the kneecaps” on his first dropkick attempt during training.
That young Legend Killer of twenty years past ended up having one of the sleeper feuds of the Ruthless Aggression Era, and now he can be the one giving a young upstart too much offense in a taped match.
