Same subject so adding on here
Joe Hendry (@joehendry) is a professional wrestler currently signed to TNA and the reigning World Champion. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative…
podcast.chrisvanvliet.com
On his NXT debut that took place shortly after the last interview with Chris Van Vliet:
“So we had two flights booked, because we suspected it was going to go down for a couple of days. But when the interview took place, I did not know. When the phone went back on, I knew. The timing is crazy. So I got on the plane to Orlando, and yes, I had the appearance the next day. Obviously, you have a dream outcome for how you want it to go, but I could never have expected the response that it got, and I have a theory as to why it got the response that it did. So it actually became WWE’s most watched video on X, it was 21-22 million views, something like that. It was an insane amount. It was the most-watched video. I think the reason is because of this. So in TNA, my music will play for a certain amount of time, and then I’ll walk to the ring. Whenever I see signs, I’ll point. I’ll get up. I’ll do my hand waving, I’ll get in. I’ll do the spin around and hold. In NXT they wanted to try this thing where they load you in and it’s the same. So you’re there right at the start. Is what I did for Mania as well, right? So it’s ‘Say his name and he appears, I believe in Joe Hendry’, and then you do the spin around. Now the timing is slightly different. So, usually I know exactly what I’m going to do at each point. I had not figured in that I would have an additional 30 seconds that I didn’t know what to do with. So I actually just reacted organically. I was just looking around. I was like, damn, all this work that I put in over the years, it was just such a validating moment. I was just looking around, and it was very real. I think it’s that real moment that people could feel. I see it in the comments, and I think when wrestling has those moments of you’re creating something, but you have those really organic moments. I think when the two come together that people really like that.”
On how his theme song got over after 5 years:
“Because in Ring of Honor, I had this song. The audio file is the exact same, but when I do the turn, it’s almost like the difference between the British Office and the American Office. I had this discussion the other day that it’s like wrestling is theater, and it needs to be larger than life. I was really more focused on the nuance before of what I thought was funny. Whereas it’s like with wrestling, you have to be larger than life. So this became that sort of thing. So I think making that transition, and also what I learned at TNA about character development. I learned then that making everything bigger and just learning who and what Joe Hendry was as a character, I allowed that to come out visually in the second entrance video that I had done. And I think by doing that, it just tipped it over the edge.”
On everything that has happened over the past year:
“There have been moments where I’ve gone, okay, we’ve either splintered off into a parallel universe, or I’ve died. It’s getting scary now, I’m saying things, and every one of them is happening. It’s really scary. It’s hard for me to sit here and say that [manifestation] is not a real thing. Honestly, it’s very hard for me to do that, because I’m at a point where everything that I’m thinking about that would be fun, and not just fun for me, but fun for the fans and a really cool moment, it seems impossible. I remember I had a conversation with my friend George, he always brings this up. We did the Rumble, and he’s going, ‘So what do you think next?’ And I’m like, I still think I can do it. This is like a couple of weeks out from Mania. He’s like, ‘I don’t know, buddy. You’ve had the Rumble, you’ve had this…’ I’m like, ‘I still think I can do it. I still think I can be on Mania.’ And somehow it happened.”
On thinking he could face Randy Orton after Kevin Owens was injured:
“No, I honestly didn’t think that at the time. Sometimes, again, I know there was a lot of chatter about when Jey Uso said he needed a tag team partner. The difficulty is sometimes, because you’re so busy, I’ll just see things on Twitter, or I’ll see a clip of the show, and I’ll just tweet the meme out there. Sometimes you go, hahaha, and you’re going, Oh God, this is caught on like wildfire. It’s getting an insane amount of likes to the point where it’s almost like people think it’s a spoiler, and I’m just kind of messing around. That’s one thing I’ve learned that before the first time we spoke, the social media game is very much you can just throw mud at the wall and see what sticks. Whereas now there are actually very real consequences if I tweet even my face at the wrong time. So for example, and again, I actually didn’t know the severity of Kevin Owens’ injury. I just saw the clip of the RKO to Aldis, and I kind of heard something about he might not be doing it. Then there’s that thing there. I thought, well, I’ll tweet at my face now. And actually, I took that down because when I understood the full context, because I was like this is not the appropriate time. So there’s things that where you’ll see a little thing, and then there was the moment with Jey, where I tweeted it because I didn’t really think I would have been in serious consideration. And then you tweet and go, well, actually, I just ruined this for myself.”
Well, Raw was in Scotland:
“Yes. Well, the scariest one, if you ever tweet with emotion and not with logic, that’s when these problems happen. I don’t know why. I was just having a day when a fan said, ‘You know what, Joe Hendry’s really falling off.’ For some reason, I just thought, you know what? And I was kind of joking at this point. I had no idea that I was going to be selected to go into the Rumble, and I tweeted out, ‘Let’s see how well this tweet ages in about four months.’ Because I was like, it’s between three and five months. So I’ll just say that. Hahaha. This tweet goes crazy. And there was a moment again I had this conversation with friends and family where I said to myself, if I’m not in the Rumble because of this, I need to just accept that I made a mistake, and I need to own it. There was a moment where I thought to myself, I may have cost myself an opportunity.”
On the tweet implying that he was going to win the World Championship:
“That’s that’s another thing as well, because it’s like, I see things online where people are like, Oh, well, he just talks about WWE stuff, and it’s not true at all. I spend most of my interview time talking about TNA wrestling, but a lot of the WWE stuff will go viral. So it’s this game where I have to talk about exciting possibilities at WWE, but also need to represent the championship. So for me, this title reign is about doing big business for TNA. That’s my goal. There are certain title reigns that will be remembered for certain things. When Josh Alexander was champ, it was about classic match after classic match after classic match. If you bought a ticket to TNA wrestling, you know you were getting a five-star banger. With me, it’s about me with this championship. When people look at my reign, they will see business; that’s what I wanted to do. And every decision that I’ve made has been about what is going to be best for business. I know a lot of people had a lot of things to say about certain decisions that I’ve made. So for example, people who are in the industry understand how great it is for business for to me wrestle Randy Orton. Whereas other people, they’re going to have thoughts on it. But I understand. It took me zero seconds to decide whether that’s what I want to do. I was like, I’m there. Let’s do it.”
On some fans believing that Joe Hendry was squashed by Randy Orton:
“The thing is, one, it was back and forth, so I got offense in. It’s Randy Orton’s 20th WrestleMania. It’s also Randy Orton. The thing is, I did the spin around. So it’s like me being the Joe Hendry character, the RKO is one hit kill. And in that show the feedback that I got was exactly what it was supposed to be. And let’s be honest, the next how many days later, we had the biggest show TNA has ever had in 10 years, we had a higher attendance at Slammiversary. So we were past 4,000. I understand what this is, and my job is to put asses in seats for TNA wrestling.”
On fans feeling that the TNA World Championship was devalued:
“I think that in wrestling, everything has to be a story. So, in the movie, does Rocky win every single match? I mean, the story is Joe Hendry lost to Randy Orton. How is the champion going to recover from this? You know who else lost quickly at WrestleMania? John Cena to The Undertaker. You know who else lost quickly at WrestleMania? Triple H. People have lost quickly at WrestleMania and these are the stories that we’re telling. When John Cena lost to The Undertaker, it was what is the path from here? And that’s what I’ve really learned from watching John Cena is that just make everything a story. Everything is a story. So it’s just about, okay, where do I go from here as champion? It added more weight and drama to the triple threat that we had, because it was me, it was Frankie [Kazarian], and it was Ethan Page, and it’s like the partnership’s so strong. All three outcomes were completely within the realms of possibility, and nobody knew what was going to happen that night. Not even we knew what was going to happen that night right up until the wire. So that’s when it’s exciting, when anything can happen.”
On being backstage after WrestleMania 41:
“I can’t believe this is real. So after that happened, I got to the back and I spoke with Randy. I spoke with CM Punk. Spoke with Cody. Then as I’m walking, I had this little room, which we should talk about, we gotta give credit. This was a military operation to get me into the building. We’ll come back to that. But I was walking from this little room I had. I was just walking past. And again, this is when life doesn’t feel real, who could have timed this? So I’m walking back. You actually saw this in the backstage footage. I had a nice conversation with Michael Cole. I had a wonderful, quick conversation with Stephanie McMahon as well. Then I was walking to the back, and because I just watched the rest of Mania with William Regal, actually, which was very cool, because he was someone I met really early on in my career and he helped me advance my understanding of what this game is way quicker than I would have had we not had that. He talked to me for two hours when I just started to go, this is what this game is. Ultimately, the big message was that pro wrestling is about building trust with the audience, trust with your peers, trust with your colleagues, trust with management. It’s about building trust with those stakeholders. But anyway, I digress. So I’m walking back from there, and at the same moment the match has just finished, John is walking back with his WWE Championship. He’s literally just become the greatest of all time. It’s now a fact he’s the greatest of all time. He’s walking back, and this is how awesome John is. Sees me, once he came out of Gorilla, immediately walks over to me.”
Had you ever met him before?
“Yes. We’d had conversations. He gave me advice at the Rumble, and as he said on Pat McAfee, I did my very best to implement that advice. He said that he feels I’m going to be a major player in this industry. Praise doesn’t come higher. So he came up to me, and there’s two camera crews. They’re filming this interaction. I’m like, I can’t believe the timing that this is happening. He’s just won the championship. I say, ‘John, congrats.’ He didn’t even want to talk about the fact that he just became the greatest. He wanted to give me advice, that’s who John is, right? He just said to me, ‘I told you exactly what you needed to do at the Rumble. You’ve taken it on board. You’ve done it. You had a good performance at the Rumble. You were brilliant tonight.’ Then John walks off. I hope they release this footage one day, I turned to the camera and I go, can a day get any better than this? AJ Styles walks into shot and he says, ‘If you’d have told me that the TNA World Champion would walk out at WrestleMania, I wouldn’t have believed it. Congrats, man. It’s nuts.’ I can’t tell you how fortunate I am to be living the life that I am. I’ve almost got no words for it. The gratitude that I feel on a daily basis for this journey, I have to say I really have to take a moment to talk about how great TNA and WWE have been, because at any point they could have gone, nah. TNA and WWE have been so good to me to allow me to have these moments, because this has huge benefit for me. We could come up with a million reasons why either TNA or WWE would say, not this time, but they have been unbelievable with letting me have these moments. I just feel like I really do feel huge gratitude to both companies in the way that they’ve worked together to create cool moments for me and the fans, and just those moment, those moments that I’ve had, like with Triple H and getting that feedback and the words of advice that he gives, like, that’s I know how busy he is and how important those moments are. I’m very grateful for it.”
On becoming Randy Orton’s WrestleMania opponent:
“So I heard Triple H say recently, and I don’t want to misquote, but this is what I heard him say. I heard him say that revealing things before they happen is ruining the surprise, saying how it was done afterwards is almost like just the intrigue of how that happened. So with respect for that, he’s talked about conversations we’ve had. So I will say I found out about a week before and Triple H called me personally. And I thought, because I was at WWE World. That’s one of the reasons it was so well hidden, because I was already booked for WWE World. So there was no shock or surprise with me being around the company. I thought I was going to be getting a promo there, maybe presenting a Slammy, something like that. And so he said, can you talk? Phone goes, and very quickly we got to, ‘So I’m sure you’re aware that Randy needs an opponent…’ And I’m in the airport, I did not think that’s what the call was going to be, and I said yes immediately.”
On the surprise being kept a secret:
“I couldn’t tell anybody. So I think that there were two people on the side of TNA that knew, and I had to sit on this for a week. That’s pretty tough. But I thought that you know how wrestling is. You’re never the champion until, it’s not when the ref’s hand goes down, because Chris Jericho won the title once and then un-won it the same night. So it’s like, you’ve won the title, you’re back at the hotel, or you’re on the plane and you’re out there, we got the belt. Okay, now I’m the champion. And with this sort of thing, it’s like, so we had that conversation. But anything can happen between then and WrestleMania. So at that point, I was trying not to get too high or too low. It’s just there. I’m just going to work. The schedule was insane. So I had a 12-hour media day for TNA. The next day I had media in the morning, the TNA show all day, and then the meet and greet after. Then, I believe the next day, I had WrestleCon in the morning and afternoon, Westside gun show at night, I had WWE World in the middle as well on the Saturday of WrestleMania, I might be missing out on a day or whatever, but it was crazy. Then on the day of WrestleMania, I had WrestleCon in the morning, WWE World until I think 1-3, something like that, or we got me to the arena, sort of three, four. And then it was pretty quickly I was in gear and on and on the way there. So it was like there was no time to think, which was the best thing for me. I just couldn’t overthink it. So that was one of the best things about it, but I didn’t think it was real until the night before, when it came to putting the whole thing together. And I thought, Okay, now this has to be happening.”
On working with Randy Orton:
“So I don’t how far I want to pull back the curtain on that one, for a couple of reasons, but this is what I’ll say. Randy was unbelievable to work with, unbelievable. WWE has been unbelievable. TNA has been unbelievable. The way I’ve been treated, I could not have asked for better. Randy was just the coolest guy when it came to this and we clicked immediately. Because I don’t want to speak for him, but I felt like I understood the assignment, and I just really strongly felt that that visual of putting our two characters together, the spin and the RKO combining, to me, was the viral moment. So I think I was in the mindset of having a bit more experience, going back to John Cena’s advice, I wasn’t thinking so much about my moment. I was thinking about the moment for the show and for the business, and I think John giving me that advice at the Rumble helped me to have a bit of a shift there.”
What was the specific advice?
“So I remember going up to John and again, this is how this is how cool John is. So I said, ‘Hey, it’s great to ask your advice sometime.’ This is Rumble, where he’s got a huge spot here. He’s like, ‘Well, why don’t we go talk right now, and you can ask me anything you ever wanted to ask me.’ I was like, All right. So I was like, ‘What am I going to ask you that’s going to yield the greatest return? I’m in there with Roman. How do I take what I’ve got and make the most of it? How do I make it more?’ John said this on Pat McAfee, so you know I’m not kind of peeling back the curtain here, beyond what’s out there. He said, ‘You don’t.’ He paused, and he explained to me, and he was 100% correct. The viral moment at the Rumble for me was the entrance, looking around, coming in and hitting my moves on Miz and then being eliminated by a Roman. After Roman comes in, that’s his moment. So it’s like, what John was trying to say is it’s like your moment is coming out there, and now you’re a cog in a bigger machine. It’s not about you getting what you can out of this moment with Roman, it’s like, how do you prop up Roman’s moment? That kind of taught me to instead of think selfishly about these moments. If I hadn’t had that conversation with John, I don’t know that I’d have been thinking about the best way to do the RKO. It’s like that got me thinking about it from that perspective. I really feel like me and Randy were just on this same page. He was awesome. I can’t tell you how thankful I am to have all the moments that I’ve had.”
How did they sneak you into the building?
“Sorry, I did not answer that question. Alright. So we got me in a car at WWE World, I had to change in the car, not into my wrestling gear. We did that at the building, but I had to change in the car. I got the most generic hoodie possible. So it was like, Las Vegas hoodie or whatever. I had a COVID mask. I had sunglasses. I looked ridiculous. It was covered head to toe. Honestly, I wasn’t even in the betting odds. There was an “other” category where you would have to manually put in Joe Hendry, that’s how secretive this was. It was not one of the standard options. There were about 10 options, and I was in “other.””
On Nick Aldis being the odds on favourite:
“On that topic, this is how cool Nick is. Nick came down to help with this moment. So he invested his time to give input about what we could do. So the fact that Nick gave his time to help that moment, that’s how cool Nick is.”
On using his real name in wrestling:
“You know, I’ve had this conversation a couple of times recently. For many years, I regretted using my real name. But now, I think it’s because it’s also me, that people are so interested in what I’m what I’m doing, because it’s like they’re seeing someone living their dream in real time. Which is, I think again, like I said earlier about when I made the entrance in NXT, that was Joe Hendry the person, that 30 seconds was Joe Hendry the person having that moment, and I think when that comes through, that’s the beauty of wrestling. It’s when stories that you tell and reality intertwine, and you’re not really sure where one begins and the other ends.”
On the story behind say his name:
“I don’t know. I just remember when I wrote the song I wanted it to be as literal as possible. So I wanted it to be I will tell the audience when to clap, I’ll tell them when to wave their hands, and I will explain that if you are to say my name, you will be rewarded with me appearing.”
On whether the John Cena match is still possible:
“Of course it’s possible. The real question is do I think it will happen? Yes.”
Why?
“I mean, my track record’s looking pretty good, but I can’t tell you. I can’t explain it. I just feel it in my heart, to be honest with you. I just would be lying if I sat here and said I didn’t think it would happen.”
On Triple H saying Joe Hendry would be at many more WrestleManias:
“He did say that to me backstage, exactly as he said it in the press conference is what he said to me. This is what I really like about my interactions with Triple H. He’s an awesome guy, he’s just a cool guy, and for him to take that moment to come over when he’s producing WrestleMania, to come over, because that moment is for me, is for nobody else, for him to give me that moment, very busy, to go, Hey, listen, you’ll be here again, but this is the fun one. He knows what he’s doing, and in a way, him telling me that takes all the nerves away, doesn’t it? It allows you to go out there and be free and enjoy the moment. And he did that at Rumble as well, because it could be an overwhelming moment for people. I have no idea why I was so calm at WrestleMania. I do suspect it’s because I ran it through so many times in my head over the last year, and part of that is because he took the time to have that conversation with me.”
On possibly relocating to the USA:
“Certainly. I was kind of thinking about it last year as well. But I think we’re at the point now where I’ve been home for one full day, the time before I was home for two full days. I love Scotland. I love it. But I need to have a place here.”
What is Joe Hendry grateful for?
“Friendships, that I know what I need to do and the time I have with my parents.”
