Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt's match at WrestleMania brings storied families together
ORLANDO, Fla. — The Doc McStuffins theme song blares from a TV three rooms over, my 4-year-old daughter loudly reciting each word while haphazardly strumming a guitar over repeated requests to quiet down “so Daddy can take a very important phone call.”
My demands are to no avail, however, and soon, the WWE champion — arguably the most macabre character in the pro wrestling universe — is on the other end of the line.
"What a perfect atmosphere,” he says with his gravelly trademark laugh, noting the background noise, “for a Bray Wyatt interview.”
Bray Wyatt (WWE)
Don’t be fooled, though. Despite what his manic, dreadlocked appearance and purple on-screen reputation might suggest, Wyatt is nothing if not a family man, in every sense of the word.
For starters, the 29-year-old has two little girls of his own, so he knows the drill when it comes to enduring the repetitious and often insufferable sounds of children’s cable television. He’s also the erstwhile leader of the WWE’s Wyatt Family, an oddball father figure to a cult-like stable of misfits that, for years, terrorized some of the organization’s most well-known and well-liked stars.
But beyond all that, the 6-foot-3 Wyatt is, was and always will be a Rotunda — Windham Rotunda, to be exact — a man whose grandfather, father, uncles and brother have all made their mark on the professional wrestling business over the years. And as a third-generation superstar, Wyatt understands as well as anyone the importance of protecting his family name.
The U.S. Express - Barry Windham & Mike Rotundo (WWE)
“Growing up in that atmosphere, I thought that everyone was a wrestler,” Wyatt told FOX Sports. “I thought that when grandma went to work, she was putting on her cowboy boots and her cowboy hat and having a dog-collar match. That was how deep it ran. It wasn’t like I understood the world for what it was. To me, it was wrestling, and that’s what this planet was about.”
It’s fitting, then, that Wyatt seems to exist in his own little world when the cameras are rolling, but he’s far from alone when it comes to current WWE stars with deep roots in the business. In fact, Wyatt’s opponent at WrestleMania 33 on Sunday, Randy Orton, is a third-generation entertainer in his own right, and once worried that he couldn’t meet the standards set by his predecessors.
“Growing up, I never really pictured myself being able to do it,” Orton told FOX Sports recently of his introduction to pro wrestling. “A lot of my friends would ask me, ‘Are you going to wrestle like your dad?’ and I’d be like, ‘Oh, no, there’s no way.’ I mean, how could I accomplish something like that? That’s my father, larger than life. How could I be like that?
“So I knew how important the Orton name was to the wrestling business,” he continued, “but I didn’t consider myself worthy of carrying on that legacy, early on.”
Randy Orton (WWE)
Over time, both men have proved their worth — Orton since he first took to the squared circle in Missouri in 2000 and Wyatt since his Florida debut in 2009 — and each has put to rest any concerns that he might not pan out as a pro, with Orton claiming several major titles over his career, while Wyatt has emerged as one of the promotion’s brightest young stars.
So as they prepare to headline the Super Bowl of sports entertainment, it’s safe to say they’ve done their families proud.
“As a child, I was running around in cowboy boots, fantasizing about what it was going to be like when I finally got in there,” Wyatt said. “But it was also constant pressure, as you get older. Anything I ever did, any column that was ever written about me, the first paragraph, no matter what I’d achieved, was about my lineage and where I came from.
“And it’s an honorable thing,” he added, “to now be included in that first paragraph.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJseo_5iZcI
*****
Long before his grandson Randy was a thought, the late Bob Orton, Sr., was making a name for himself in the southeast as The Big O and El Lobo before becoming a fixture in the old World Wide Wrestling Federation, where he tag-teamed with the late Gorilla Monsoon and challenged the likes of Bruno Sammartino for the heavyweight championship in the late 1960s.
Soon after, Orton’s own sons, Barry and Bob, followed their dad into the business, with his namesake, Bob Orton, Jr., eventually becoming his tag-team partner in Florida.
“I think I always kind of knew I was going to wrestle pro and follow Dad into the ring,” Orton, Jr., 66, told FOX Sports last week. “He took me to the matches a lot and I got to know them guys, and I saw these big, huge guys and I was really impressed and decided that that’s what I wanted to do. You’d listen to the crowd and you kind of like that stuff — or at least I did.”
"Cowboy" Bob Orton Jr. (WWE)
Over the next three decades, Orton — known best as “Cowboy” Bob Orton, the brainchild of the legendary Gary Hart — embarked on his own Hall of Fame career, rising to fame as a heel in the 1980s. By 1985, Orton was part of the main event at WrestleMania I at Madison Square Garden, working the corner for Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff in a tag-team match with Hulk Hogan and Mr. T.
In that era, though, the schedule was grueling — more so than it is today — and Orton admits he found it difficult at times to balance the demands of the job he loved and quality time with his wife, Elaine, and his three children, including his oldest son, Randy.
“Roddy and I, when we were in our heyday, we used to sometimes be on the road 100 days, maybe even a little bit more than that, and never get home,” Orton, Jr., recalled. “I used to fly home in the morning and fly out in the afternoon, just so I could see my kids and my wife.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnoLH9v9Aio
When Orton was home, however, the household transformed into an unofficial crash pad for other pros in the area, helping mold Randy’s perception of wrestling as a career from a young age.
“My dad rolled a lot with Don Muraco, he was close to the family, and the Samoans always were, and still are,” said Orton, who also recalled frequent visits to George Steele’s Florida condo as a kid. “A lot of those guys, I looked up to and was intimidated of, but had respect and love for, all the same. It was an interesting kind of chemistry, I guess you could say, with my dad and his buddies.
“They’d come over and my mom would cook, and if it was nice outside, she’d barbecue,” Orton continued. “We had an apartment by the airport in St. Louis, so it was a perfect place for the guys to come through. And I remember our neighbors kind of seeing all these guys in their tank tops, fanny packs, Zubas and flip flops in the back, and it was like, ‘What, is the circus in town? What’s going on?’ But it was cool to be known as the kid with the father who was a wrestler.”
Orton Jr. also made it a point to take Randy on the road when he could, exposing his son to a world that became something of a second home, setting the foundation early on for Orton to join the profession.
“I remember many locker rooms in the mid-80s, late-80s, and I remember the faces: Junkyard Dog, Hillbilly Jim, Greg Valentine, Jake the Snake, Andre the Giant, Hogan, Slaughter, so many guys I grew up around,” Randy Orton said. “I don’t remember the shows and the matches as much in that time period as I do the interaction with the guys backstage.
Randy Orton with Andre the Giant (WWE)
“I remember Bret Hart watching me while my dad went out and worked,” Orton continued, “Piper sitting down and teasing me, Junkyard Dog chasing me around the hallway and the locker room with the broom, looking at Jake the Snake’s python in the empty shower that they used as a cage and just being in awe that this big snake was just feet from me, watching it slither around.”
Even so, Orton Jr. says he never pushed Randy into the business — ”It was never expected that I would give it a try,” Orton said — but it came as little surprise that Randy chose to become the latest wrestling Orton after a brief military career ended in 1999. Still, Elaine Orton had doubts about her son following in his dad’s footsteps, and made sure that he understood, from a young age, the sacrifices professional wrestlers have to make.
“I think the biggest thing that I heard from my mom throughout the years when she thought I was heading in that direction was that you’re going to have a family one day and you’re on the road all the time, and it makes it really hard,” Randy Orton said. “In my early teens, when she said this to me, she was thinking of my future wife, my future children, and how hard it was going to be on them.”
"Cowboy" Bob Orton Jr. with his two children (WWE)
Nevertheless, Orton forged ahead on a path to wrestling stardom, and as he earned his stripes in the early 2000s Orton found his father to be somewhat hands-off when it came to physically showing him the ropes.
“I’d go down with him a little bit to the gym, but once we got him started, I let other guys handle that, and then I’d say yea or nay to how he’s being taught,” Orton Jr. said of working with his son. “Because you know how it is with your kids — sometimes they’d rather hear it from somebody else than you. So I tried to stay out of his way as much as I could.”
Instead, Orton Jr. became a walking wrestling encyclopedia for a young Randy as he found his footing in the business.
“We were at the South Broadway Athletic Club in St. Louis and it was January of 2000, I was 19, and it was my first match,” Orton recalled. “And the way they did it down there was you had one match a month and you had about a month to come up with your match. That first match, I wanted to tie up when the bell rang, wanted to boot the guy in the belly and give him a power bomb first thing, and I didn’t understand, then, how wrong that is to start a match.
“It’s a build, it’s a story,” he added. ““If you have 10 minutes, you don’t start the match with a freakin’ power bomb.”
(WWE)
Considering the wealth of experience at his disposal, Orton quickly learned to listen when his father spoke.
“To have my dad come in with me, get the keys to the club where we trained, and to get into the ring with me — it wasn’t like he was slamming me all over the place and teaching me to do superplexes off the top rope,” Orton said. “He would just sit down to me and talk to me about what makes sense and why you wouldn’t start a match with a finishing move. And all of that is common sense to me now, but not knowing and having him there to ask questions and to give me feedback on things, that was huge.
“That was like my ace in the hole,” Orton continued. “It was 100 percent because of my father that I got my gig up here, and I’ll forever owe him for that, as far as I’m concerned.”
Orton’s in-ring development was rapid, and by age 24, he was already the WWE heavyweight champion — one of 12 world championships to his name thus far. But his maturity did not come along as quickly, with multiple suspensions forcing him to come to terms with the fact that, as a legacy wrestler, he represents more than himself in the ring.
“When I would show my ass when I was in my 20s, late 20s even, and get suspended for whatever reason — that wasn’t helping the Orton name, and I realize that now,” Orton said. “I’ve grown up in a lot of aspects.
(WWE)
“I’m a father, a husband, I’ve got five beautiful children,” he continued. “There’s a lot to life, and this company has given me so much, and my last name, the legacy of my family has given me so much. So for me to disrespect it in any way, even if there’s going to be no backlash from my (family), I had to learn to respect where I came from and learn how important and how special it was.”
And if Orton should add title No. 13 to his resume on Sunday, he knows it’s not he who deserves the credit.
“If it wasn’t for my father, when I got out of the Marine Corps at 19 years old, working midnights at the gas station — if he wouldn’t have given Jack Lanza and Tony Garea a call and flown me up to Stamford for them to get a look at me, I would not be here right now,” Orton said. “So that all comes with respecting the game, respecting the company, respecting where I’ve come from. And anymore, now, that’s just part of my daily life, knowing that you’ve got to show that respect.”
(WWE)
*****
Mike Rotunda was somewhat new to the wrestling scene when he married his tag-team partner’s sister, Stephanie Windham, in the mid-'80s. But it didn’t take long for Rotunda to learn how life and work change when your family is wrestling royalty.
“My family wasn’t in the wrestling business,” said the 59-year-old Rotunda, best known as the early-90s tax-man heel Irwin R. Schyster. “Then when I married into it, it changed the dynamic. My wife had grown up in the sports entertainment business and she was aware of me having to be on the road as much as I was, and not everybody gets a chance to have that situation.”
In addition to Rotunda’s old partner, Barry, the Windham family also included another superstar brother in Kendall Windham and a legendary patriarch in football player-turned-wrestling icon Blackjack Mulligan, Rotunda’s father-in-law. And so it likely came as no surprise that Rotunda’s two boys — known to WWE fans as Wyatt and Bo Dallas — took an immediate shine to the profession.
“We gave them the opportunities to choose and develop what they wanted to do, but they did grow up seeing their father on television,” Rotunda said. “And like any kids, they imitate parents. They wrestled at home — they were into filming matches, and my daughter did the commentating and introduced them. They grew up around it. But I don’t think we assumed that they were going to get into the sports entertainment business, per se.
“I think in the back of their mind it was always something, as they got older and they grew up, that they were going to try to do,” Rotunda added. “But it wasn’t a situation where you’re set and done — ’This is what you’re going to do when you grow up.’ ”
Wyatt, meanwhile, interpreted his upbringing differently.
“The choice was never there,” Wyatt said. “To me, in my head, I was always going to do it. Whether or not I was going to be successful at it was the fear.”
One thing that’s for sure is that being the son of a wrestling bad guy can be difficult for a kid trying to find his way in the world.
“I got into a lot of fights because of what my dad did on TV,” said Dallas, known away from the ring as Taylor Rotunda. “Everybody hated him, which in turn made them say stuff to me about him, and of course, I stood up for him.
“What ended up (happening) was I got in a lot of fights, so my dad brought me to the high school,” Dallas continued. “I was probably 8, 9, 10 years old, something like that, but I’m at a high school where kids are 16, 17, 18 years old, and I started going there every single day (for) amateur wrestling practice, and they’d just whoop me.
Bo Dallas (WWE)
“My dad said, ‘You want to fight? I’ll take you somewhere where you can learn,’” he added, “and that’s where that all began, finding myself in sports and channeling my aggression in a different manner.”
Wyatt said that experience — having to endure childhood heckling on account of his family’s line of work — was formative for both Rotunda brothers.
“It’s kind of like ‘A Boy Named Sue,’” Wyatt said, referencing the Johnny Cash hit. “(Dad) knew we had to be raised tough and that was the way it was. So we lived in the woods and we’d fistfight with each other every day, and when we’d get to school we’d get in more fistfights. I have scars all over my knuckles and my face and all over my body because of that, but I also attribute all my success to it, growing up hard.
“And I think that’s kind of the nature of my family,” Wyatt continued. “Behind all this facade of pro wrestling characters, there’s a group of very tough men.”
Courtesy of Troy
If Rotunda’s boys were going to get into ring, however, Rotunda wanted to see to it that they got their college degrees first, and Wyatt ended up playing college football at Troy as a result. Dallas was supposed to play football on a scholarship, as well, but after that opportunity, at Webber International University, fell through, Rotunda gave his younger son the OK to pursue wrestling.
“Right there, I was done,” Dallas said. “It was exactly what I wanted to do, and all I needed was the go-ahead. And from then on — I was 18 years old — it was all about wrestling.”
In December 2008, a few months after his high school graduation, Dallas made his Florida Championship Wrestling debut under the name Alex Rotundo, with Wyatt in the crowd to watch.
“He and a couple of the other football players from Troy drove down to Fort Myers,” Dallas said. “And after the match, I jumped in the car with my brother, and he said, ‘I don’t want to go back to school. I want to do this. This isn’t fair, I need to do this now.’”
Wyatt said watching his kid brother in the ring was all he needed to know his own future wasn’t in football.
“It was in some little tiny arena somewhere in South Florida, and it wasn’t 10,000 people, it was more like a few hundred, if that,” Wyatt said of the show. “And I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like a childhood vision — I sat there and I saw my brother doing it, and I’m going, ‘Oh my god, what am I doing? This is giving me a feeling that football has never given me.’
“So when I went back (to school), my head was completely out of it,” Wyatt continued. “And I’m training for the NFL Combine, working on 225 reps and 40-yard dashes and shuttles, and I realized that something had happened to me and that my heart was no longer in this. I felt like I’d found my calling.
“I’d always known,” Wyatt added of his desire to wrestle, “but that was the first time that it actually felt real, and I couldn’t wait to stop playing football, which I’m sure was a shock to anyone who knew me, because that was everything. But it felt so right. It was time, I wanted to be there, and I wanted to be him.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR6yVUxXnyA
Soon after, Wyatt signed on with FCW, and by June 2009, the brothers — known at the time as Bo and Duke Rotundo — were the promotion’s tag-team champions.
The following summer, Wyatt competed on WWE’s NXT development show under the name Husky Harris, but when his first run in WWE ended — following an on-screen altercation with Orton, no less — Wyatt left feeling like he’d done damage to his family’s legacy.
“I was a failure and an embarrassment to my name,” Wyatt said. “And it was that that was the deciding factor, the motivating factor — not to mention that I have children now, and I’m looking them in the eyes and going, ‘I’m going to provide for them’ — that I knew that failure was not an option. And that’s not a cliche. That was the truth.”
When Wyatt returned, he did so as the Mansonesque bohemian he is today, and by summer 2013, the Wyatt Family had graduated from NXT to the company’s main card.
“I cannot fail at this, because if I fail at this I have nothing,” Wyatt said of his second run. “I put all my eggs into this basket, and it was through that horrible time in my life that I found myself and who I really was and who I really wanted to be.”
(WWE)
At the same time, Dallas was making his own climb up the NXT, and eventually WWE, ranks — with his brother as his confidant and most loyal supporter.
“We made a deal with ourselves that we wanted to make it, but on our own accord,” said the long-haired Dallas, who, unlike Wyatt, projects a personality not unlike that of an excited puppy. “Obviously you see that we’re nothing like each other, and we’re also nothing like anyone else in our family. We didn’t want any doubt that, ‘Oh, they made it because they’re third-generation.’
“Our characters are completely different,” he continued. “And we love to give respect to our family, too, but we wanted to make it on our own, and to have my brother along the way helped out.”
Rotunda, now a WWE producer, has been along for the ride, too, but he’s chosen to remain mostly hands-off when it comes to his kids’ development.
“They had the chance to go in there every day and work on it, which you have to kind of do, because you can only be taught the basics — and then it’s what you do with it that makes you an individual,” Rotunda said. “For instance, Bray, where he bends over backwards and does the crab walk, I sure couldn’t have showed him that. That’s the kind of thing you develop on your own.”
(WWE)
Rotunda also says it can be difficult to not conflate business with family when it comes to his boys’ careers.
“It’s at times stressful because if something goes wrong or you want to see them do better, you have to look at it professionally,” Rotunda said. “Basically I treat them like anybody else on the roster. They’re expected to do certain things and handle themselves the appropriate way, and sometimes it’s difficult, but it is also cool that I’ve had the opportunity to be around and watch them grow.”
To that end, last summer’s WWE draft effectively split the brothers up — Dallas competes under the Raw brand, while Wyatt performs on the SmackDown card — but the pair has remained as close as ever away from the ring, despite their antithetical personalities and differing accomplishments on stage.
“I’m over the moon excited for my brother, and any success he gets, I feel as well,” Dallas said. “And I know he’d feel the same way about me. The wrestling business has ups and downs and you’ve just got to keep fighting. I’m not down at all, and my brother is kicking ass and I’m loving it.”
“We have a bond that you can’t create,” Wyatt added. “He’s my brother, and us doing this together is something we’ll take with us the rest of our lives. These are the greatest days of our lives and we’re living them in this moment, now, here, and I look forward to us being old and sitting around the campfire drinking Jack Daniels talking about how wonderful life has been.”
(WWE)
*****
For dissimilar characters, Orton and Wyatt have more than enough in common, and — storylines and lineage aside — Sunday’s matchup between the most prominent active names in two of wrestling’s most iconic families will make for must-see TV at WrestleMania (streaming live on WWE Network, 7 p.m. ET).
However, Wyatt insists he’s approaching the biggest match of his life as something of a lone wolf, despite the wealth of experience at his disposal.
“I am a prisoner of my own mind in a lot of ways, and I tend to overanalyze things,” Wyatt said. “And I think them standing back and letting me try to do this in my own way and not putting on the pressure of talking about it is more beneficial to me and who I am.
“Them not putting extra, unneeded, unnecessary pressure on me is more help than not,” Wyatt continued. “So I’m kind of going into this doing it my way, which is how I got to this point in the beginning.”
(WWE)
Like Orton Jr., Rotunda also took part in WrestleMania I, as half of the U.S. Express tag-team duo, and while it’s a thrill to watch his son star in the business’ biggest night more than three decades later, he plans on enjoying the show as a dad — at least as much as his job will allow.
“You just have to be able to remove yourself from what you know about what’s happening out there, and just kind of sit back and enjoy the moment,” Rotunda said. “My wife flew out to Phoenix when we did the chamber match (in February) where Bray won the title. She sat ringside for it, and it was an amazing feeling for her to be able to see that happen. Obviously it’s a dream come true to become a world champion, WWE champion, and it was a great moment.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKn5ulNt6ck
Orton Jr. says he, too, has learned to appreciate his son’s success as a fan, rather than a colleague.
“There are mannerisms, sometimes, that make me think he kind of looks like me out there, but he’s his own man, and he’s got his own style, and I think he’s one of the best,” Orton Jr. said. “I’m just really proud of him.”
As such, Randy Orton rests easy knowing he’s made his family happy.
“Things have changed since (my dad wrestled),” Orton said. “Now, if I need a weekend off in a month or so because I want to go to my daughter’s recital, I get off. You know what I’m saying? My dad used to be gone every holiday. Birthdays? Forget about it — two shots on Sunday, driving a thousand miles a week, sometimes more.
“So it’s come a long way to where I’m in a good place,” Orton added, “And any concern my mother had when I was younger, about not wanting me to get into it because of the schedule and the hardships for my family, those are out the window. I’ve been able to come to terms with WWE and my schedule. My wife is fine with it, they’re all excited to come to Wrestlemania, and they’re all proud.”
And at the end of the day, doing right by those who came before them is all Wyatt and Orton have hoped to do.
“I’m very proud, now, to be included in that opening paragraph,” Wyatt repeated of his heritage. “That’s what it all boils down to.
“I’m no longer the son or the nephew or the grandson,” he continued. “I’m now one of them, and that’s as cool of a thing as I could have happen in my life. And now here I am, ready to headline WrestleMania as the WWE champion. I know that they’re all proud, and I know that Blackjack is looking down from heaven, smiling, and that’s a very touching thing to me.”
You can follow Sam Gardner on Twitter or email him at samgardnerfox@gmail.com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80b-_FLlBA0
