Riddle/Orton/Roman/Hunter
By Scott Keith on 4th June 2022
So here's what should be done with Matt Riddle
After tonight's defeat on Smackdown, Matt Riddle decides to go “fuck it” and break bad. He seeks out and gains help from Triple H, who orders Roman to fight Matt on Raw and arranges for the Usos and Heyman to be savagely assaulted before the match by a pair of masked men.
Roman cheats to win but Triple H comes out and orders the match restarted and Riddle clobbers Roman multiple times with a sledgehammer in the head and pins him to win the Raw title. Afterwards, Roman as he is being taken off in a stretcher, Hunter personally tells a badly injured Roman that for cheating, he's being stripped of the Smackdown belt too and as he's being loaded into the ambulance, the two masked men who brutalized Heyman and the Usos are waiting in the ambulance and resume brutalizing Roman.
Afterwards, Riddle shows up with a suit and shoes and a new short haircut. Riddle is also speaking like a normal person and not a stoner and calls HHH into the ring to praise him for helping stop the cheating Roman Reigns and end his reign of terror. The Smackdown belt is tossed into a trash can to further erase Roman's reign as champion and Sami comes out to try and kiss ass, as he realizes Riddle has become Hunter's new favorite and that Hunter's prepping to create Authority 2.0.
Sami asks to join the two but Hunter calls him a pathetic quisling and demands that he fight Hunter's two masked henchmen lest he be fired. Sami fights the two guys, who beat him and unmask to reveal themselves to be LA Knight and Cameron Grimes (but comes back as El Generico and as a good guy).
Grimes and Knight (who dismisses his “male model talent scout” persona as him trying to hide his shame at failing to beat Grayson Waller) align themselves with Riddle, who claims to still be a good guy. But in his matches, he begins behaving more and more villainous. Roman shows up to demand a rematch, but gets the crap kicked out of him and permanently written out of Raw after losing a loser leave town match that ends with Roman being dumped into a garbage trunk and never seen again.
Finally, Randy Orton returns (looking pretty much like he did when he first came into the company) and needless to say is horrified that Hunter has corrupted the innocent Matt Riddle. Orton, in full earnest mode and showing emotional vulnerability, tells Riddle that Hunter's manipulation and abuse of him early in his career turned him into the villainous Viper who was forever betraying people who got close to him and rendered him incapable of trusting people, let alone having friends. It was only until he met dumb, innocent Matt Riddle that Randy was willing to let down his guard and learn to trust another person and open his heart to friendship and trust. And he accuses Hunter of purposely corrupting and perverting Riddle, just because he couldn't stand that Orton was truly happy for once in his miserable life while Hunter's life was falling apart as far as losing control over NXT and his heart attack ending his chances of ever wrestling again.
Cue Orton/Riddle feud as Hunter will be in Riddle's corner with Grimes and Knight and in Orton's corner, Austin Theory and Cody Rhodes; the later helping Randy in his time of need now that Randy has reverted back to a human being and not the Viper and the former because Hunter convinces Vince to reject Theory for Riddle.
Jesse
They would be foolish not to!
OK, real talk, I didn't read it, but I assume it was brilliant and thus I didn't need to.