Edge def. Randy Orton (Last Man Standing Match)

ORLANDO, Fla. — Good friends make the best rivals, and there’s no denying Randy Orton brought the best out of his former tag team partner, mentor and borderline savior Edge. The Rated-R Superstar answered months of attacks from Orton to win a Last Man Standing Match that took the two rivals to hell and back, with a stopover in the bowels of the WWE Performance Center.

The story of this rivalry has been one of Edge’s grit and Orton’s twisted love for The Ultimate Opportunist — the same love that provoked him to savagely attack the WWE Hall of Famer and his wife months ago and open this match with a pair of RKOs intended to quickly keep him down for the count of 10.

If there’s one thing Edge has made clear, however, it’s that he simply won’t allow himself to be kept down. Tapping into the grit that brought him back from a nine-year retirement, The Ultimate Opportunist battled Orton through the WWE Performance Center, where the facility’s various decorations, machines and tools of the trade became either instruments of torture or collateral damage. (Even the cameraman wasn’t safe, finding himself bowled over during a brawl in a confined hallway.)

Things came to a head atop the back of a production truck, where Orton lined up Edge for a Con-Chair-To but instead found himself smothered by a standing triangle that left him face-down on top of a steel chair. That was seemingly enough to earn a 10-count, only Edge stopped the ref and, choking back tears, administered a Con-Chair-To of his own to end the match before gently touching his forehead to Orton’s.

In some ways, the unusual circumstances of this year’s WrestleMania gave Edge and Orton the perfect environment to settle their score. This rivalry became more personal than most a long time ago, so it’s only appropriate that they ended it between the two of them, and Edge delivered his message to the one man who really needed to hear it.