Last night’s WWE Summerslam event ended in controversial fashion, after the main event match between Brock Lesnar and Randy Orton was prematurely brought to an end after the former UFC champion busted Orton wide open. Although the majority would typically believe that this was a work there was something distinctly odd about it, leading many to believe that Lesnar had thrown his script out of the window and decided to go to town on Orton’s forehead of his own accord in a shoot finish.
Referees called off the match after Lesnar left Orton lying in a pool of his own blood following two incredibly stiff elbows to the forehead, which led to Orton receiving ten stitches after the event had ended. As a result many now believe that it was an unscripted finish to the match, and that Lesnar decided to end the match on his own terms by beating the claret out of his opponent.
However, trusted WWE insiders Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez have revealed that the bloody injury sustained by Orton was intentional, albeit more violent than what WWE had planned. Speaking on their Wrestling Observer Radio show, Meltzer said: “Obviously the idea was to get hardway blood. The elbow was designed to cut him open, and I don’t know how badly [Orton] was hurt. Obviously he was selling and they were trying to work the idea that he was knocked out and they had to stop the match, and from what I can gather due to no one talking about anything going awry, that was probably close to what was supposed to happen, if not exactly what was supposed to happen… there was no doubt that [Lesnar] was looking to open him up.”
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Meltzer continued: “The idea was to hardway Randy Orton. Would [the WWE] have wanted that much blood? I seriously doubt it. He needed ten staples. But they were looking to open him up. It’s very obvious that there are rules for Brock and there are rules for everyone else, and when it comes to Brock’s matches for whatever reason blood is allowed in those matches, and they’re not doing blades. They certainly didn’t [use blades] here.”
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Meltzer and Alvarez then went on to discuss WWE’s carelessness in allowing such an injury to be inflicted upon one of their employees, with Meltzer saying: “Randy Orton does have a history of concussions. If you’re gonna ban chair shots to the head, I’d rather take a chair shot to the head than that freakin’ elbow.”
Alvarez added: “If you want blood, give me a razor blade and not some 290 lb MMA fighter with a sharp elbow bashing me in the head… you cannot take away the blade and claim it’s barbaric, and that let Brock Lesnar hardway dudes with his elbow.”
So there you have it – the conclusion to Summerslam wasn’t a shoot and was all planned ahead of the event. Though it was undeniably an underwhelming conclusion to the most heavily promoted match of the evening, it certainly got a lot of people talking, which is exactly what the WWE will have wanted.
