UPDATE: My original post references Orton dropping the U.S. title. Actually, Jeff Hardy retained at Backlash. My apologies for the error. Orton has confirmed his knee injury in an article on WWE.com.

ORIGINAL: Orton is not on the European tour and it doesn’t look like he will be back in action anytime soon because he is currently out with an injury. We are working to get more details but one source told us that Orton had minor knee surgery last Tuesday. That would explain why he has not appeared on Smackdown Live since dropping the United States Championship to Jeff Hardy at the Backlash pay-per-view.

We were told that he shouldn’t be out of action for more than a couple of months and he is not expected to miss SummerSlam. One source told us that he could be back in July.

Orton is already on a limited live event schedule because he wants to give his body more time to heal up in between tours and because he wants to spend more time with his family so he would have likely been off the current European tour regardless of injury status.











