Randy Orton RKO on Brock Lesnar Was Truly Outta Nowhere

Brock Lesnar returned to WWE on Monday. He’d been absent from their programming since WrestleMania, but it’s been an eventful couple months for him, between training for UFC 200, beating Mark Hunt, and prominently failing two anti-doping tests.

He arrived at the ring, looked menacing, and said … nothing, while his mouthpiece Paul Heyman did all the talking (and talking and talking). At the end of what was a glorious promo, Heyman was saying how Randy Orton – Lesnar’s opponent at SummerSlam in August – would never be able to hit the RKO (his finisher, which has become a viral meme) on Lesnar.

Lo and behold, Orton emerged from out of nowhere and did just that. The crowd went berserk. The move had an additional element of surprise because Orton was drafted to the Smackdown roster; two weeks into the brand split there was already an invasion angle. While this was bound to happen eventually, its occurrence this soon made for a nice element of surprise.