Cowboy Bob Orton

[Vern Gagne]

What kind of wrestler was Orton in his day? Most of what I remember is Orton with the cast on his hand, in Pippers corner.

[Guest LooneyTune]

Imagine Dory Funk Jr., except not as old, and not related to someone crazy. He was a normal wrestler for his time. Worked lots of headlocks, arm submissions, etc. etc.

[Guest M. Harry Smilac]

Like Randy, a great tag team wrestler but not someone you'd pay to see on top.

[Guest LooneyTune]

I don't know... Orton was pretty over in his career, plus the fact wrestling in the 70's meant punch-punch-kick-slam-punch you didn't need anything unique.

[Guest Frank_Nabbit]

Oton was a technical guru. ***-**** star matches when facing competent opponents

[Guest Trivia247]

Its hard to gage Orton's ability if you don't have the extensive archive of wrestling stuff that stretches back to his NWA days in 70's 80's the few times you see him in WWF at least in the PPV Wrestlemania tapes, you only see him wrestle once.

 

Gorilla dubbed him having Excellence of Execution, but without seeing the evidence its hard to justify that.

[Jericho2000Mark]

From what I've seen, Orton Jr was a great worker, his matches with Paul Orndoff in the early 90's UWF(Herb Abrams fed) were excellent...and it cerainly wasn't because of Orndoff.

[Precious Roy]

I saw him have some decent-good matches in the UWF, don't remember anything special from the WWF days, but I assume his NWA stuff was quality.

[cawthon777]

I wouldn't mind seeing some of his matches with Backlund for the title in 82.

 

Bob went directly from the cage match with Snuka to a rivalry with Orton, a rivalry that - on-camera - stemmed back to when the two were wrestling in high school.

[strummer]

Orton had a very good match with Hogan on the Memorial Day edition of Superstars in May 1987. One of the best Hogan matches I've ever seen

[JHawk]

Orton Jr. also had an excellent match with Pat Patterson at the Philadelphia Spectrum on 9.18.1982 when Patterson was in the twilight of his career. He even had a couple of decent matches with Pedro Morales just prior to the Backlund feud that year.

 

<--- wishes the Backlund-Orton MSG match was available on tape someplace

[Vern Gagne]

So was the cast a real injury, or just part of the storyline?

[Guest Frank_Nabbit]

So was the cast a real injury, or just part of the storyline?

Its called gettin' heat.

[JHawk]

So was the cast a real injury, or just part of the storyline?

Its called gettin' heat.

Orton to this day claims the original injury was legit but it couldn't heal properly because he wrestled through it. As much money as these guys were making back then (especially near the top of the card), I wouldn't be surprised either way.

[Dobbs 3K]

I saw "Cowboy" Bob Orton Jr. work an indy show (NAWF) in Milwaukee in early 1998. It was a special show because Mick Foley worked it as Cactus Jack, less than a week after declaring on RAW he wouldn't be Cactus Jack anymore.

 

Anyway, Orton could still go...he didn't do much stalling, moved around a lot, and did a couple decent moves like a delay vertical suplex and a powerslam (IIRC). He was actually one of the most solid workers on the card (not that that's saying a ton). But, if he was that decent in 1998, I imagine he must have been very good - awesome in his heyday.

[Guest Sturgis]

OK this has been bugging me for a ong time now. There was a John Melloncamp video for "Little Pink Houses" there's a guy dancing in it that I swear is Bob Orton Jr., is it? I asked Meltzer and he didn't know.