The dog days of Summer are over. We are officially past labor day which means different things to different people. Kids are returning to school, fashionistas are putting away their white clothing until Memorial Day, baseball teams are gearing up for pennant races, and wrestling fans for once have something to look forward to at this time of year.
Yes, for the first time ever, the WWE has released a Randy Orton DVD set.
It took almost 5 years of beinga main eventer, but yesterday brought Orton's first set, a long overdue release due to the immense popularity of "The Viper". However, the very fact that it is Orton's first set is reasoning for the major problem that exists within it.
As per usual, we're talking about a 3 disc release with the first disc in documentary format while the latter two feature the best bouts of Orton's career. This would seemingly be a formula that is can't-miss, but without a true definition of what disc one should be, I certainly wouldn't call it a hit.
Many WWE productions have featured straight biographical pieces as first discs in 3 disc sets. Successful versions of this formula range from Chris Jericho to The Big Show. It would seem that Randy Orton's story is one that needs to be told, but along with his interesting life, the WWE tinkered with the idea of releasing a piece similar to another successful WWE production, The John Cena Experience.
For those who remember, last year WWE put out that DVD and it chronicled John Cena's road to Wrestlemania. Fans were able to get inside the life of John Cena as they followed him around his busy life with a camera. It was a unique and successful endeavor and one that I suggested the WWE duplicate with other stars.
While the WWE certainly wanted to listen to me, they wanted to do so with a guy that never had a DVD release before. Thus, they realized early on that doing strictly a behind-the-scenes piece about a guy fans know little about was risky. In its place was the DVD we are reviewing at this moment.
Instead of getting a biographical piece or a behind-the-scenes piece, we got both. Unfortunately, it was not that two discs were devoted to giving us both though. One disc was jumbled together to give us fans as much content as humanly possible about Randy Orton. This would seem great but with life events and the life of Orton in the present day being interwoven haphazardly, it becomes a confusing piece to follow. The content itself is fantastic, but the presentation is certainly below average.
The matches included are fine and it is interesting to see how Orton has evolved as an in-ring competitor, but I've honestly never had much to comment on in regards to matches included on a set. You get 6 hours worth of matches that you'd have to search for in many places on the internet, so I believe in being grateful as it pertains to that. What you can't get anywhere else is disc 1, so I tend to focus on the quality or lack thereof or those pieces.
In this case, the content quality is high but I can't get over the odd presentation. The simple solution would have been to present both as separate stories, but I suppose this option was thrown out early on. It's a shame, as I think it would have worked a lot better that way. If it was me, I would have put out "Evolution of a Predator" as purely a biographical piece and waited on doing the "Randy Orton Experience" until next year. There's no way Orton's popularity is going anywhere so having DVDs sell a year apart wouldn't hinder sales at all. This would have been a lot smarter and it would have allowed fans to digest Orton's life story fully before trying to understand his crazy life as a wrestler today.
I'd still recommend giving this set a look as it's probably the only Orton set you are going to get for a long time and as I said, the content is quite good. Just be focused as things will bounce back and forth quite freqently and it won't be the easiest thing to follow. There's great stuff in there, so focus your eyes and pick up on as much as you can!
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