Randy Orton Talks WWE Retirement; Latest on Matt, Jeff Hardy; RVD Open to AEW Run

Bleacher Report catches you up on the latest news from the WWE Universe and All Elite Wrestling.

Orton Wants to Wrestle Into His 50s

Randy Orton returned in November after missing a year and a half of action due to a significant back injury, but The Viper has no plans to step away from wrestling any time soon.

During an appearance this week on Adam's Apple (h/t Subhojeet Mukherjee of Ringside News), the 44-year-old Orton divulged that he wants to continue wrestling full-time until he is at least 50, and possibly even longer:

"I don't wanna do the old Undertaker or Shawn Michaels schedule which they needed to do, understandably, but wrestle at WrestleMania, take the summer off, maybe you'll see 'em at SummerSlam, yada, yada, yada. I wanna be on the road every week. I wanna make all the TVs and be on all the PLEs and at 44, just turned 44, I would love to be able to go into my 50s. Maybe I wrestle until I'm 50 and call it and that's 30 years. Thirty years with the same company, on top. I wrestled more pay-per-views, PLEs, whatever you wanna call it than anyone else in the history of the WWE."

After Orton and Matt Riddle dropped the Raw Tag Team Championships to The Usos in May 2022, Orton disappeared from WWE programming so he could undergo spinal fusion surgery on his back.

The Apex Predator did not resurface until November 2023 when he teamed up with Cody Rhodes, Seth Rollins, Sami Zayn and Jey Uso in a WarGames match against The Judgment Day and Drew McIntyre.

In the Adam's Apple interview, Orton noted that the surgery changed his outlook on his wrestling future, saying:

"Well if you would've asked me two years ago [how much longer I have left in wrestling], I would have thought it would've been close to the end. But I had a spinal fusion a year-and-a-half ago and that changed the game. I'd been in pain through my entire 30s. I was hurting. I was begging for time off when I was 35."

Orton added that the current WWE schedule isn't as taxing as it was in the past, and he also revealed that there have been two occasions since his return that he requested and was given a week off by WWE head of creative Triple H to recover.

With Orton noting that Triple H has no problem giving him some time to rest when he asks for it, his career could be extended significantly beyond what most expected when he was on the shelf due to huis back.

Hardy Boyz Want to End Careers as a Team

It is unclear what the future holds for Matt and Jeff Hardy in terms of what wrestling promotion they will end up with next, but Matt isn't hiding the fact that they want to move forward as a team.

In an interview with Liam Crowley of ComicBook.com, Matt said it is the desire of both himself and Jeff to finish their careers together as The Hardy Boyz:

"That would definitely be our goal. It is very important to us to finish how we started. We started as two brothers on this journey. Our goal was to win the tag team titles of the world one time, and obviously we did that many times over. We do want to end that way. We've talked, and we're both very aware of that. We want to end our careers together as a team."

Matt, 49, had been with AEW from 2020 until this year, but after his contract expired, he made a surprise appearance for TNA at Rebellion last month.

Following his TNA return, Matt wrote on X that he is a free agent, meaning he is not contractually tied to TNA or any other company.

As for Jeff, Fightful Select (h/t WrestlingInc's Max Everett) reported last month that he had been telling people his AEW deal was up in the spring.

That suggests Matt and Jeff could soon both be free and clear to go wherever they please and continue their run as a tag team.

The Hardy Boyz are considered by many to be among the greatest tag teams in pro wrestling history, as they have won nine WWE tag team titles, two TNA tag team titles and one ROH tag team title together.

It isn't yet known if WWE, AEW, TNA or another company is on their radar, but the stars may be aligning for Matt and Jeff to enjoy one last run together as a tag team.

RVD Open to More Substantial Run with AEW

Rob Van Dam has wrestled a handful of matches for AEW since last summer, but every indication thus far is that he is taking it appearance by appearance rather than having a contract in place with the company.

Speaking this week on 1 Of A Kind With RVD (h/t Mukherjee), Van Dam suggested that while he would be open to

"I would like to think that I'm open to any conversation. So anything's worth considering. Let's hear what you got in mind, whatever. But no, I don't have any of those talks. What you see is what you get, and that's all anybody is talking about. All anyone is talking about doing, let me put it that way."

The 53-year-old Van Dam made his AEW debut last August in a match against "Jungle Boy" Jack Perry, and he has had a few more matches since then, including a loss to current AEW world champion Swerve Strickland in January.

His most recent appearance was on the April 20 episode of Rampage when he won a four-way match against Isiah Kassidy, Komander and Lee Johnson.

RVD is an all-time great, as he was arguably the face of ECW and later went on to become the WWE champion. He is also a WWE Hall of Famer.

Despite his age, Van Dam is in great shape and continues to perform at a high level, so there is still value in making him part of the product.

AEW has no shortage of young performers who could benefit from working with RVD, so it may behoove AEW to do something bigger with him in the near future.

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