Ted DiBiase said he has been wondering whether his son could come out of the crowd at WrestleMania, a thought that suddenly has a live edge to it as Randy Orton and Cody Rhodes prepare to meet for the Undisputed WWE Championship at WrestleMania 42 on Saturday.
DiBiase did not frame it as a promise. He framed it as a hope, saying that all the guys his son started with are there now and are the stars, including Orton and Rhodes, and that he wondered if he was simply wanting to see something happen when he pictured Ted Dibiase Jr. appearing from the audience.
The name still carries weight because Ted Dibiase Jr. was once a former Legacy member, along with Rhodes, Orton and briefly Manu. Within that group, Rhodes and Ted Dibiase Jr. were known as Priceless, and the faction ended at WrestleMania 26 in a No Disqualification Triple Threat Match that Orton won by pinning Ted Dibiase Jr. after an RKO.
That history matters because the present has moved so far beyond it. Orton and Rhodes are set to wrestle for the Undisputed WWE Championship at WrestleMania 42, a match that has been almost 20 years in the making because of what happened when Orton took both men under his wing in 2008.
Ted Dibiase Jr. has also been carrying a very different kind of past. Before he was cleared of all charges, he pleaded not guilty to 13 federal crime charges and was facing 185 years in prison for welfare fraud. After his acquittal, he said he wanted to return to a normal life.
That is what gives DiBiase’s speculation its odd pull. Fans had already spent weeks wondering whether Ted Dibiase Jr. might return after Orton made phone calls about wrestling having more than one royal family, but the old Legacy storyline now has to compete with a newer reality in which Ted Dibiase Jr. had seemed far less likely to reappear at all.
For now, the most important fact is that the match everyone wanted from the Legacy era is finally here, while the person whose return would turn it into a throwback still has not shown himself. DiBiase can imagine his son stepping into the frame at WrestleMania, but the larger story belongs to Orton and Rhodes, whose collision carries the memory of everything Legacy was and everything it never became.