Joe Hendry did not expect to replace Kevin Owens at WrestleMania 41.
At WrestleMania 41 last month, Kevin Owens would be forced out of his planned match with Randy Orton at the event due to a neck injury. Joe Hendry would end up replacing Owens, facing Orton in an open challenge match, coming up short and eating a second RKO for good measure.
While speaking to Insight With Chris Van Vliet, Hendry was asked if he expected to be called when Owens was pulled.
“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.”
Hendry continued, speaking about the RAW in Scotland where fans expected Hendry to team with Jey Uso, referencing his 'let's see how well this tweet ages in about four months' social media post about him 'falling off.'
“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.”
In another interview, Hendry spoke about his schedule, and how he very much he enjoys it. You can read more about that here.
Elsewhere in the same interview, Hendry spoke about his first appearance with WWE NXT. You can read more about that here.
