While appearing on a recent edition of the “Busted Open Radio” podcast, TNA wrestler Joe Hendry revealed when he found out about his WWE NXT debut this past Tuesday night.
Hendry competed and was eliminated early in a battle royal to crown a new #1 contender for the WWE NXT Title.
Hendry said, “What’s interesting about it is, it’s not how we usually do the entrance. I was looking forward to experiencing the NXT production to see how they would want to do it. I started very similar to how (Chris) Jericho started with turning around. I’m there for a little longer. I hadn’t really prepared for how long that would feel in real time. There was about 20 seconds where I was like, ‘I can take this in.’ The comments, people said you could see the genuine moment I had with the crowd. That’s me going, ‘Thanks guys. Thank you.’ I feel the fans had my back that day. I go stand out there before I turn around, and I heard gasps. If you watch the video, you can see the camera shake. For that to be WWE’s most liked video since WrestleMania. To be able to do that representing TNA is unbelievable. I have not processed it yet.”
He continued, “One of the advantages of it happening so quickly is that I didn’t have time to overthink that aspect of it. This has absolutely exceeded all expectations in all ways. I started to think ‘this could be a moment’ when there were people who work at the PC [WWE Performance Center] and other stars at the PC, a lot of them were talking about my song. A couple of the producers were saying they expected a big reaction. I started to get the rumbling that more people knew the song and my act that I realized. I still didn’t think it would get that over. It doesn’t feel real. It’s total validation.”
