Randy Orton's Surprising Win at Wrestlemania 24

by Jack Windham
March 31, 2008

WWE shocked the wrestling world at Wrestlemania 24 by having Randy Orton picking up the surprising win and retaining the WWE Heavyweight Championship.

Unpredictable

The majority of wrestling fans believed that either John Cena or Triple H would be walking out of the Citrus Bowl with the WWE Heavyweight Championship in hand.

With Randy Orton failing to generate much momentum as a champion, those predictions made sense.

Management was said to be heavily leaning towards putting the title belt back on Triple H.

However, management also wanted to make sure that there is at least a little bit of unpredictability at Wrestlemania 24.

So, the decision was made to keep the WWE Heavyweight Championship on Randy Orton because very few people were expecting it.

Foreshadowing

A lot of fans realized that something weird was going on when the WWE Heavyweight Championship match went on before the Floyd Mayweather match and the World Heavyweight Championship match.

Usually, WWE sends the fans home happy by ending the show with a babyface winning a championship.

Most were expecting to see either John Cena or Triple H finishing off the show with the title held high in their hand.

However, when the match was announced, a lot of fans started to believe that Randy Orton was going to be retaining the belt.

What Next?

Randy Orton isn't going to be a long term champion. Unless he starts generating more of a reaction from the audience soon, he's going to be dropping the belt in the upcoming weeks.

There's a good chance that he'll be defending the title once again at Backlash against either John Cena or Triple H.

There's also a good chance that he'll be dropping the belt at that pay per view as well.

If Randy Orton does retain the belt, then that could be a sign that management is keeping the belt on a heel so that CM Punk can challenge for the belt later on in the year.

It would be a lot more interesting to have CM Punk facing John Cena or Triple H, but WWE has a tendency to avoid doing feuds between babyfaces.

Hopefully, the recent success of the feuds between babyfaces (Shawn Michaels vs Ric Flair and Triple H vs Jeff Hardy) will be enough to convince them to change up their booking styles a bit.

Closing Thoughts

If WWE was looking to show that they're unpredictable, they pulled that off with the surprise Randy Orton win.