Randy Orton Clarifies Comments About Dives In Pro Wrestling

This week, WWE was in Randy Orton's hometown of St. Louis, Missouri and Orton stopped by the Hot 104.1 Radio Station for a sit down in-studio interview and was asked about the "dive" controversy in professional wrestling. Below are the highlights from that interview

“I’m putting over AJ [Styles] strong, right? AJ, he has dives. A lot of guys that I work with do dives. I’ve been dived on a lot. I don’t have a problem with dives out of the ring, but when a lot of these guys, who don’t have anything to fall back on, and they’re not making any money doing it, they’re going around town wrestling on these independent shows — which is awesome, by the way. A lot of our guys, like AJ, Kevin Owens, Seth Rollins wouldn’t be here without the indie scene. But they’re smart. A lot of these guys are going to go out there and they’re going to break their neck at 23 years old, doing stuff they shouldn’t be doing.

“It’s a display of athleticism, no doubt, but … I’m not going to watch gymnastics. I want to go watch a story, a fight between a good guy and a bad guy. How many flips they do each, I’m not keeping a tally … But do you know who had my back on it? Guys like AJ. Guys that do dives and know what they’re doing … Kurt Angle texted me after that. He didn’t do dives. If he did, he would put it where it should have went … he wouldn’t have done it just to do it