Randy Orton has detailed how he battled back from a career-threatening injury to return to WWE. The 44-year-old was absent from WWE programming for 18 months, between May 2022 and November 2023, with a serious back injury. Speaking to The Independent, Orton revealed he was told that he would never wrestle again as he had surgery to fix the issues he started having in his "early 30s". "I thought my career was over," he admitted, before explaining his motivation behind battling back. "Every day I just got a little better, a little better, and eventually I started packing on weight and I started transforming my body."