Orton and Riddle were contacted about the shirts on April 19th.
The duo known as RK-Bro (Randy Orton & Matt Riddle) were paired together in WWE for a year before Orton stepped away for a total of 18 months to nurse a back injury. Throughout their run together, they captured the Raw Tag Team Championships on two occasions.
Coming out of WrestleMania 38, there was 4:20 merchandise released for Riddle and Orton. Riddle was interviewed by Chris Van Vliet and said him and Orton tried to convince WWE for months to create the merchandise. It was on April 19th that WWE contacted them and said they’ll do a one day, limited release. After seeing how well the merch did, the company continued on with it.
Dude, it took a lot of convincing (for WWE to create 4:20 merchandise). But, I’ll tell you this, they’re not mad about it. They made quite a pretty penny on it and so did I and so did Randy (Orton) I would imagine. But, yeah, we were trying for months and months and then 4:20 came up, and now if you know Randy, Randy doesn’t like to advertise anything. Randy does his job and that’s his job. Unless he wants to do something, he’s not gonna do it, which, that’s why Randy’s so cool. So, we want this 4:20 shirt. WWE hits us up on 4/19, they go, ‘Randy, Riddle, we’re gonna do an RK-Bro 4:20 shirt. We’re only going to do a limited release, one day only.’ Alright, they could’ve told us any other shirt, whatever. I probably would have shared it. Randy wouldn’t have shared it. Me and Randy texted each other separately from then and we go, ‘We’re sharing the hell out of this shirt. We are getting this over. We need this to sell.’ We wanted it, we needed it, we finally got what we wanted. We needed to make this happen. We got to let them know how much money there is, and literally, not even 16 hours into 4:20, we got a call. They’re like, ‘Oh, we’re going to keep the shirt going. We’re just gonna keep it going’ and even after Randy left because of his injury, they had the Bro 4:20 shirt which sold like hotcakes and the Bro 4:20 hats and everything else.
When the shirts came out, Orton tweeted that it ‘took some work’ to get it on WWE Shop.
Orton made his return to WWE at Survivor Series in the men’s WarGames match. At the Royal Rumble Premium Live Event, he was part of a Fatal 4-Way for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
