WWE wrestler Randy Orton reportedly forked over a thousand bucks to get someone to level his Elden Ring character for him

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Anything can be pay to win if you want it bad enough.

NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 01: Randy Orton attends the WrestleMania 30 press conference at the Hard Rock Cafe New York on April 1, 2014 in New York City.
(Image credit: Taylor Hill/WireImage via Getty Images)

Randy Orton is a busy man with things to be doing. The once-upon-a-time youngest heavyweight champion in WWE history has, you know, half-nelsons to be practising, suplexes to be suplexing, and, um, ah, Montreal Screwjobs to attend to?

Okay, I don't know much about wrestling, but I do know a fair bit about Elden Ring, which makes me slightly disappointed that I wasn't the person that Mr Orton paid $1000 to powerlevel his character in the game. Because according to a recent stream from Insiderz TV (spotted by Kotaku), the wrestler got so impatient with Elden Ring's hard-going early hours that he decided he'd be better off just buying his way to a higher level. Can I do that the next time I'm banging my head against something difficult for a review? (I cannot).

According to Insiderz hosts Mansoor Al-Shehail and Brennan Williams—former members of WWE's Maximum Male Models wrestling stable—Orton revealed his love of Elden Ring to them before an episode of either Smackdown or RAW (Al-Shehail couldn't quite recall which), but confessed he'd been running into some difficulties in its early goings.

"Yeah no it's fucking hard," Orton told the pair in Al-Shehail's recollection, "Uh, I paid a guy like a thousand bucks to give me, like, infinite runes so I could just level up to 100 right away… I couldn't deal with that bullshit so I just paid a guy to get me a bunch of runes."

"People are gonna talk about that on Twitter," said Al-Shehail, "and think that that's a fake rumour!" 

"Out of all the rumours that sound fake," answered Williams, "that is the realest one."

You can see Al-Shehail's telling of the story in the clip below, and you can enjoy an exciting, artistic dramatisation of it on The Insiderz TikTok channel. 

For mere mortals like you and me, chucking away a grand so you don't have to deal with Margit is difficult to contemplate, but I suppose that's why we're not wrestlers. But by all accounts, it worked out well for Orton. Both Al-Shehail and Williams say Orton loved the game itself, his fraying patience for "that bullshit" at the start of the game aside. What I need to know is, what on earth is his build? 

Joshua Wolens
Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.