Speculation on Randy Orton's WWE future after the quick loss to Keith Lee at Payback

Keith Lee picked up one of the biggest wins of his WWE career at Payback as he defeated Randy Orton in a surprisingly brief match. The Payback match lasted for six minutes, and WWE booked the former NXT Champion to go over the Legend Killer.

Dave Meltzer speculated on the post-Payback edition of the Wrestling Observer Radio that WWE could potentially be heading for a Randy Orton WWE Championship reign based on the finish of the Payback match.

Will Randy Orton become the next WWE Champion?

Randy Orton is expected to face Drew McIntyre for the WWE title at Clash of Champions, and the title change could possibly happen at the PPV, which is scheduled to take place on September 27th.

Meltzer stated that WWE could book Randy Orton and Keith Lee in title matches soon. Meltzer did add that WWE's decision to allow Lee to go over Orton was a good move from the storyline and star-creating standpoints.

Meltzer explained the following:

"The only upset was Keith Lee's quick win over Orton, and I thought that result just made sense. I think that the one thing is that, to me, as soon as I saw that result, I was like, 'Orton is winning the title from Drew McIntyre after all. I don't know that, but that was the immediate conclusion I came to. And they are setting up for Orton vs. Keith Lee title matches as well. So, if Orton is going to win the title, him losing to Keith Lee, I wouldn't say it was a no-brainer; it's WWE, they could have easily not done it, but they did it, and it wasn't a great match at all, you know six minutes and just a pin out of nowhere but just him winning, from a storyline standpoint, everything like that and a star-creating standpoint, it was a good move."

While the match between Keith Lee and Randy Orton wasn't all that special in terms of the in-ring work, the idea may have been to make Lee look strong in the early days of his main roster run.

Keith Lee is reportedly positioned to be a top babyface on RAW, and the win over Randy Orton could go a long way in cementing his spot at the top of the card.