In an interview with The Sun, Randy Orton shares his opinion on his match with Triple H at WrestleMania XXV, punting Vince McMahon in the head, why Manu was booted from Legacy and ultimately released from WWE, which wrestler he would add to Legacy, and much more. Here’s some of the highlights:

On his match with Triple H at WrestleMania XXV: “This was a storyline where Triple H needed retribution. He needed to beat the living p*** out of me because of what I did. I handcuffed him and made him watch while I beat up his wife and then kissed her while she was unconscious. Then to top it off after I do that, I knock him out with a sledgehammer to the head. I kick his father-in-law in the skull and put him in the hospital, and do the same to his brother-in-law. I think when all that happens and then you have this match where he can’t be disqualified or he loses the title, you kind of screw yourself. We were not able to do everything that the other guys were able to do. Matt and Jeff Hardy had a hardcore no-holds-barred match. They were able to use all the bells and whistles to beat the hell out of each other. Everyone was expecting Triple H and I to do the same, but we had rules that put a fence around everything we were able to do. We weren’t able to go to the extreme. If anything hurt us, it was that.”

Did he try changing the rules of the match with Vince McMahon? “No, because I was happy with the match. I really was. The crowd in the arena had seen three and half hours of wrestling and, not only that, they had seen some very good wrestling. Shawn Michaels and Undertaker put on a hell of a performance, the Money In The Bank match was crazy and a lot of guys did some death-defying maneuvers. When you do that and then you have this match with two guys who can’t be outside of the ring for more than 10 seconds, you kinda screw yourself. You’ve backed yourself into a corner where it’s going to be hard to outperform the matches that went before you. I think our storyline and what our match was all about deserved to be the main-event match on WrestleMania. But I think that the restraints and stipulations around the match made it harder on us than it should have been.”

What about the wrestling fan population who have grown tired of Triple H: “Yes, there is that minority of people out there who have seen enough of Triple H. I’ve had fans come up to me and beg: “Please kick Triple H in the head.” He’s a huge babyface, probably the ultimate babyface. But no matter what the character is, there’s always going to be that smart group of people who want to see the guy on top shot down. Just like right now there’s probably guys telling Batista to beat the hell out of me this Sunday at Judgment Day.”

Any thoughts about going easy on Vince McMahon when booting him in the head: “Did you see that kick to Vince? It didn’t look like anything was pulled did it? They replayed that thing from every angle and he definitely ate a big piece of my boot. When I’m kicking Vince in the head, if it doesn’t look good on live TV, people are going to think: “Oh, he didn’t want to kick him too hard because, deep down inside, Orton knows that is his boss so he took it easy on him.” So I did the opposite. I kicked him harder.”

Extras: “I want everything I do in the ring to be as crisp and as perfect as humanely possible. I calculate my movements to where it’s going to be the best for that moment. So when I kicked Vince in the head, the only thing going through my mind was: “I’m going to kick this b*****d in the skull as hard as I can. Here we go. I’ve been waiting for this one!”

Why was Manu booted from Legacy AND The WWE: “Manu had some respect issues. There are a lot of different reasons he wasn’t good for Legacy, but the reason he’s not with the company anymore had a lot to do with his backstage attitude. His father was the great Afa, of the Wild Samoans, and Manu had been in the ring since his early teens. Now, in his early 20s, technically he’s been in the ring for more than a decade – but not really. Really he’d only been in the business a month by the time I knew him. He carried himself like he had been in the business for 15 years. He thought he knew everything. He thought he deserved a first-class seat when we went overseas. He thought he didn’t have to pick up in the lockeroom after the show was over, like the new guys do. He didn’t feel like he had to pay his dues, because he’d already paid them. What he doesn’t understand is that wrestling once a week for 10 years doesn’t count. When wrestling is all you do, when everyone in the world knows who you are and you’ve held titles and main-evented PPVs – that’s when you start to get to the point where you might deserve a little something extra. I don’t think he applied himself in the gym or when it came to his diet. He just thought: “Hey, my dad is Afa, the Wild Samoan, so I get a job. I deserve to be here.” He just didn’t get it.”

Who would make a good 4th member to Legacy: “If someone came to me and said we need another guy in this group, I would go with Harry (Smith). Right now though, I think we’re fine. I feel like everything is running its course. It’s going smooth.”

Well there you have it. Randy Orton’s opinion on quite a lot actually. What’s your thoughts? Props for kicking Vince McMahon, but what about letting Triple H Take Retribution like that?

HHH - The Game

MSN had a chance for an online interview with Triple H while he was promoting the 500th episode of SmackDown. It was at least worth pointing out some highlights:

On the grueling WWE schedule:
Tripe H started this by saying: Sometimes people say, “It’s so rough, it’s so rough.” It’s not that bad. It used to be a lot worse. But I have two kids and I am home three days a week. But when you do go on the road, it’s hectic. You’re in a different city every day. You fly in to a new town, you do a show, you go to the next town, you sleep, you wake up and do it again. It’s basically just a series of transportation, to the gym, to the arena, to the plane.

On revealing Stephanie McMahon as his real wife:
For story lines and business, we try to keep that stuff separate. But people knew and we joked about it when I was in DX [comic wrestling tag team formed with fellow superstar Shawn Michaels]. The only reason I was apprehensive is where do we go on the flip side of it. Look at it like this: There is the real world and the WWE Universe. So the cat is now out of the bag in the WWE Universe and it now exists there. So anything that has to do with me story-line-wise, you have to be conscious of the fact that I am married into the McMahon family. That throws a different curve into it. So my only concern was it tainting future story lines. Say something happens, and it’s like, “Well, why doesn’t he get that change through his father-in-law?” [Laughs.] We have created a wrinkle in the fabric of the WWE Universe.

On what it’s like working for his father-in-law:
[Laughs.] Well, the good thing is I had a really good relationship with him before I even met Steph. We had a great relationship not only from a talent standpoint, but I used to work a lot with Vince hand-in-hand to create story lines behind the scenes, not just for myself but other guys. But if you have ever met Vince, he’s a complex man and it can be trying. There are times he wants to choke me and there are times when I want to choke him.

Whether he likes being a baby face or heel:
Heh heh, I love being a heel.

Nothing that we didn’t really know about the guy. But good for him.

“All of a sudden, Vince McMahon raised his ugly head and thought we were threatening his company and he’s been doing everything he can to shut us down,” Hogan told the radio station. “We’re just a reality show.”

Hogan said he was intitially worried the celebrities wouldn’t take wrestling seriously because they were paid upfront, but he had a positive experience so far.

Hogan claimed even the great Regis Philbin inquired about being on the series when it was first announced, and now people from “all of the major companies” are calling wanting to be part of Celebrity Championship Wrestling.

Hogan mostly hyped CCW during the interview, but he did find time to take a shot at Triple H and WWE. When asked about the wrestling business’ history of exposing its inner workings, Hogan said McMahon smartened up the public in the 80s when he said pro wrestling isn’t a real sport, and then created the Tough Enough series on MTV. However, Hogan believes the worst offense of exposing the business is Vince McMahon keeping the WWE Title on Triple H for so many years, and that it exposes the wrestling business more than Celebrity Championship Wrestling does. “The biggest expose is putting the World Title on your son-in-law for the last five or six years,” Hogan said. “That’s probably the biggest expose I’ve ever seen keeping Triple H as champion.” Triple H has taken a number of unwarranted shots at Hogan over the years (usually when Hogan’s been out of favor with Vince), even though Hogan was mostly positive when talking about him.

And after all that, Hogan still found more to hype up, saying he will be in New York this weekend with Steve Austin doing promotional work for liveautographs.com, which films celebrities signing merchandise that customers are buying to authenticate the merchandise.

You can listen to the entire interview here.

Last week, WWE Champion Triple H appeared on Good Day New York to promote SmackDown’s move to MyNetwork TV. Really? you ask. Apparently so. There wasn’t much to watch except when one of the hosts called him a wrestler.

Right away, HHH told them he’s not a wrestler and said he is a Superstar.
But that’s not the best part. What we got a kick out of is when the hosts asked him what happens if they call him a wrestler and he said then they would have to wrestle.

I’m not sure what to say to such a thing. Yikes?

The UK Sun Newspaper interviewed Kurt Angle last week and it’s a great interview! Angle talked about his chilling encounter with Chris Benoit about 1 year before the tragedy and had some serious words for Triple H, Shawn Michaels and Vince McMahon. Here some of the best parts:

Kurt Angle about Triple H: Burying him backstage when people cheered Kurt over John Cena: “Triple H obviously wanted to bash me because I was a better wrestler than him and I deserved to be in the spot that he was in but he was never going to give up, he’s Vince’s son-in-law. I had to deal with that stuff all the time.
I’d wrestle Shawn Michaels and I’d get a little rough with him, then I’d get heat from Vince McMahon because I beat up on Shawn too much So I’m like: ‘Well you know what, I’m tired of the two long-haired sissies. If they can’t go up against me then don’t put them up against me.”

Kurt Angle about Vince McMahon: “TNA is where I want to be and I’m happy where I am. Vince McMahon can kiss my *ss.”

Kurt Angle about Chris Benoit: “About a year before what happened I was talking to Chris – and they (WWE) were kind of running him ragged – and he pulled me aside and said: ‘Listen, I’m ready to snap.’ And I could see it in his face, it wasn’t like a normal:
‘I’m ready to snap, I’m really run down.’ He was looking at me real intense like he was going to kill me. He got some time off but when he came back they ran him ragged him again and he ended up getting concussion, brain damage and somewhere along the line he did snap. But everybody wants to blame it on WWE and Vince McMahon – and it’s really not their fault.”

As for Kurt’s move to TNA when he first arrived: “When I stepped in, what I saw were a bunch of good wrestlers flying around the ring. Nobody really cared about them. That’s the philosophy and psychology I’ve been trying to teach these wrestlers. We need to build characters.”

If you want, you can download the entire interview here.