Is Randy Orton the top heel in WWE at the moment?

Randy Orton

Ever since he was handed a golden opportunity to cash in his contract for the WWE championship on a a defenceless Daniel Bryan by Triple H at SummerSlam, he restarted his journey back to being the no. 1 heel in the business.

But has he over the 3 months that have passed since his infamous cash-in, done what he set out to do – become the biggest bad guy in the business today. There are quite a lot of factors that have to be taken into consideration before we can make a decision on the issue. So lets get to it -

The first real factor that we have to take into consideration is ‘The Authority’. Yes Triple H and his wife Stephanie (read Stephanie runs the show while The Game acts like the oaf who provides the muscle)seem to be running the show as they try to make the life of anyone who has an opinion inside the business a living hell.

However despite the fact that they seem to be the baddest of the bad, the crowd’s reaction to them is mostly stale. The reaction from the crowd is usually one of indifference and the fact that the game doesn’t make any use of his own brawn and sends the WWE’s resident kennel dwellers – the Shield to do his work seems to just dull the reaction he gets from the crowd. The fact that Triple H hides behind the Suit and Tie of the business side instead of enforcing his will just isn’t what he is good at at. In fact it makes his character quite cartoonish. Stephanie also can barely match the boos she received during the attitude era and she is barely visible most of the time and therefore like her husband – stale.

This staleness in character brought about by a tribute to the attitude era where the Game and his wife have tried to emulate Mr Mcmahon’s character from that era of brilliance. However, that attempt at imitation has flopped quite badly and the Authority cannot be considered as proper heels. The fact that the big bad boss figure could not be bad enough left Orton to really do the proper heel work.

The second factor which has to be taken into consideration is of course the good guy, which in Orton’s case is Daniel Bryan. With the crowd behind Daniel Bryan’s every move and every ‘Yes’ chant it seemed that Orton had a real opponent who could give his bad guy persona the boost it needed. Orton however seemed to be heading the other way during his month-long reign as the champion as he was overshadowed by The Authority and the Shield who he used to do his dirty work.

However, it was only after he lost the title to Bryan at Night of Champions that he unleashed his dark side. Losing the title forced him to take a different route. Moving away from Triple H, Stephanie and the Shield(though he didn’t cut ties with them), he delved into his own past to unleash a torrent of fury at Bryan.

Underhanded, diabolical and shrewd, Orton started to taunt Bryan and then proceeded to launch an assault that left him senseless and his newly minted fiancée Brie Bella in tears.

He has since then proceeded to ram home that message again and again as the WWE moved into its newest PPV, Battleground. After the ‘big’ fiasco at Battleground, Orton stepped up the game interfering in Bryan’s match where the goat teamed up with the Rhodes against The Shield RKO’ing him onto the floor much to the despair of the crowd.

It is by returning to his old-school,diabolical Viper persona that Orton has been able to match Bryan’s popularity as a face to his unpopularity as a hell. The fact that he got into Bryan’s personal life makes him face even more vitriol from the WWE universe. So it comes as no surprise that whenever he walks out, he receives some of the loudest boos from the arena.

Orton may have lost his way a bit when he became the WWE Champion, however, ever since he lost the title he has transformed himself into the heel the WWE really can pull a storyline with. He is currently the WWE’s Top Heel.