During a recent appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, Randy Orton discussed not liking his tag team partner Riddle at first and reflects on his early encounters.

“I’m shredded right now, and I owe a lot of that to Riddle because I’m really having a lot of fun right now, and I feel like it’s a direct result of the energy… like the energy you (McAfee) bring to your show here, the reason it’s different – I feel like Riddle’s different. He’s got a certain energy, people kinda gravitate towards him, the fans love him, he’s awesome, his facial expressions – he enjoys being in that ring. It’s rubbed off on me, and I’m having fun out there, and the fans I think can sense I’m having fun. For the last year I’ve been out there with him. He’s only been wrestling for six years, but he just gets it. He just gets it. He understands that those people are looking here (points at face), and they’re looking at the body language. He knows how to sell, and he captivates those people. And he captivates me.

“Riddle’s a good cat. Did not like him at first. And I think it was just one of those things where I was being a judgemental prick. You know the locker room, you’ve got a new guy coming in, and even though there’s no threatening to your position whatsoever, still, you’ve got this new guy coming in and you’re out there in the ring together trusting each other with your body, with your health. You’ve gotta shake my hand, look me in the eye, I need to know you and have some sort of relationship with you in the back before we go out there and I’m gonna go, ‘Here yeah, pick me up and don’t drop me on my head’. I think it just took him a while to kinda open up into being okay with developing that relationship, but once he did, and then I kinda… ‘Okay, I get what kind of guy he is’. I had the same problem with Dean Ambrose (Jon Moxley). And if you know Dean at all, he’s a different kinda cat. It took a couple years, but then you finally realise ‘Oh, okay, I get it, he’s just a f**king weirdo. So am I. So is everybody else in this locker room. We’re all f**king weird’. So I try to be less of a judgemental prick these days too.”