17. “I haven’t seen anyone as motivated as him in a long time” – Randy Orton On Jinder Mahal

During a recent interview with Donny Fandango on 105.7 The Point, 13 time WWE World Heavyweight Champion Randy Orton discussed about his most recent PPV opponent, the current WWE Champion Jinder Mahal.

Orton talked about how much hardwork Jinder puts in everything he does, what advice he had for him & more. Below are the highlights:

On Jinder Mahal being very motivated:
“He got let go, his contract was terminated, he did some independents, kind of studied his craft a little bit more, then we were looking for more talent to sign back up and his name popped up. I definitely thought it’d be good to have him back. I didn’t think he was going to come in and take my title. That’s another thing altogether. But I haven’t seen anyone as motivated as him in a long time. You can tell he has been hitting the gym, you can tell he has been working on his promos, when it comes to the in-ring stuff he’s fine-tuning his stuff to be more of a main event guy and learn how to tell the story in the way that the main events tell the stories. He’s doing a great job.”

On what advice he gave to Jinder:
“When he first came back he was on RAW, and I think that has helped him out. A lot of the younger guys are so anxious to please and to get better and they try almost too hard, they need to take a step back and relax. I started kind of getting it, so to speak, the lightbulb kind of stopped giving as much of a crap, I guess you can say. I don’t mean in the sense of being lazy or not caring, that’s not true at all.

But kind of letting it happen out there and letting it be more organic as opposed to coming up with all these ideas where it looks more choreographed or if you’re banking on a reaction from the crowd in a particular point in a promo or a match and you don’t get that reaction, being prepared to go another route with what you’re doing. There’s a lot of little aspects to the game that guys can get better at and that’s just a few.”