5 WWE Superstars who were accused of backstage politics

#4 WWE Superstar Randy Orton

Randy Orton has been accused of using his backstage power in WWE to derail the careers of Mr. Kennedy in 2009 and Kofi Kingston in 2010.

In Mr. Kennedy’s case, Orton allegedly complained that his fellow WWE Superstar injured him while executing a back suplex during a 10-man tag team match on WWE RAW in May 2009.

Kennedy, who was released by WWE later that week and never worked for the company again, confirmed on Sportskeeda’s UnSKripted Q&A series with Chris Featherstone in 2020 that he has since made up with Orton.

As for Kingston, the New Day member botched the finish to a Triple Threat match against Orton and John Cena in January 2010. Kingston was supposed to stay down and receive a punt kick to the head, but he kept getting back to his feet to set up an RKO.

In the end, Orton hit the RKO before repeatedly shouting “Stupid! Stupid!” in the direction of his opponent.

It was widely speculated at the time that Orton made a complaint about the incident backstage, causing Kingston to drop out of WWE’s main-event scene.

Those rumors were confirmed in 2019 when the real-life issue was addressed in the build-up to the WWE Championship matches between Kingston and Orton at WWE SummerSlam and WWE Clash of Champions.