For a time, it looked like Randy Orton's in-ring career might be over. Thankfully, he was able to recover from a serious back injury and returned to WWE last year in perhaps the best shape of his career.
The Viper has been on fire ever since and shows no signs of slowing down. During a recent interview with Adam's Apple (h/t WrestlingNews.co for the transcription), Orton revealed how much longer he plans to compete in WWE.
"If you would have asked me two years ago, I would have thought I was close to the end because I had spinal fusion about a year and a half ago. That changed the game," he explained. "I had been in pain through my entire 30's and was hurting. I was begging for time off when I was 35. I think Vince's [McMahon] quote to me was, 'Mother nature gets us all.'"
"That's hard to hear when you're 35, and your back hurts, and you're busting your ass for this company. There have been some changes. And now, I think instead of pushing the guys and running their dicks into the ground until they fall apart, there is a great atmosphere of 'How can we make this guy last?' The beauty of it is I'm not even there yet. I feel so great after my surgery. I'm a full-time guy."
"I don't want to do the old Undertaker or Shawn Michaels schedule, which they needed to do, understandably. Wrestling at WrestleMania, take the summer off, maybe you see them at SummerSlam," Orton continued. "I want to be on the road every week. I want to make all the TVs. I want to be on all the PLEs."
"At 44, I would love to be able to go until my 50's. Maybe I wrestle until I'm 50 and call it. That's 30 years, 30 years with the same company, on top."
This is amazing news for fans and if you need proof that they want him to stick around, look no further than last weekend's Backlash PLE when the French crowd was singing his entrance theme. The enthusiasm of an international crowd also isn't lost on Orton.
"Well, let’s just put it this way: since 2009, I’ve had the same entrance song. No American crowd has ever sung along to my song, and they did it in France three nights in a row," he says. "S**t, we were in Bologna, Italy, and Vienna, Austria, the first two shows of the tour, and I could hear them singing there, too."
You can watch the full interview with Orton in the player below.