Joe Hendry On Triple H’s Advice Before WrestleMania 41 Match With Randy Orton, ‘This One’s For Fun’

Joe Hendry comments on wrestling Randy Orton at WrestleMania during a new interview with Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful. 

Due to Kevin Owens suffering a neck injury, Randy Orton was left without an opponent at WrestleMania 41. This was going to be Randy Orton’s 20th appearance at WrestleMania, and there was no chance “The Viper” was missing an opportunity to make another statement on his legacy in Las Vegas. Thanks to the working relationship between WWE and TNA, then TNA World Champion, Joe Hendry, ended up competing against Orton at WrestleMania, losing to him after an RKO. 

The match was brief, but Joe is proud of the story they told and of his contribution to TNA’s growth. Now, he’s discussing the experience in an interview with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp. Joe describes the experience as surreal and reflects on taking the time to appreciate the gravity of the moment. 

“Yeah, it’s pretty surreal. I’ve always had my belief on what makes a good pro wrestler. Like, sometimes, you’ll see gifs and things like that on Twitter, and people are like, ‘Oh, that move looks awesome.’ Sometimes, us as pro wrestlers, will know what we’re looking at and think, ‘That wasn’t a safe landing or that looks dangerous.’ No matter what anybody wants to say about me, I pride myself on not hurting other people and being a safe wrestler and being someone that you can book a thousand times and all thousand times, I’m not gonna hurt somebody. I really think that played a factor,” he said. “My belief in looking after your opponent, it’s absolutely paramount to being a professional wrestler and I really feel like having the ability to wrestle Roman in the Rumble and Randy at WrestleMania, I feel like my commitment to that was rewarded. I don’t know, but that’s what my gut tells me. Also, I think that Randy has obviously unbelievable instincts for the professional wrestling business and I think he knew it was going to be a great reaction. I was honored to have that moment at WrestleMania, and I know there’s a lot of controversy around the moment, but no one can take away from the fact that the TNA World Championship was on display at WrestleMania. Also, the spin into the RKO was made a Topps trading card. If you look at the numbers on the clips on social media, that moment and my involvement with WrestleMania, it was up there with anybody on the card. Like I said, my shirt sold out multiple times. I think I proved a lot at WrestleMania when it came to the business side of things. Randy, Triple H, and the team at WWE and also TNA Wrestling, all parties involved, put me in the position to succeed, and to do that, and it was an honor to do, and I was happy to contribute.” 

Joe Hendry also reflected on what he was told by Triple H that very night. Hendry says Hunter a short he would have more WrestleMania moments, but that night in Las Vegas was all about fun.

“I was in the back, Randy went out first. I was watching the video clip and I was like, ‘Man, I’m in a featured match at WrestleMania.’ I was watching, just the video package that kind of showed Randy’s career, and that’s when it hit me that I’m being trusted with a serious piece of business right here,” he continued. “As Triple H mentioned in the press conference, he came over to me and he told me, ‘Listen, you’ll do more of these, but this one, you’ll have fun. The others will be higher pressure, but this one will be fun.’ It really was, and I was just very honored and privileged to be a part of that event, to represent TNA, and I’m thankful to all parties involved.” 

Randy Orton has said that he expects to see Joe Hendry again one day and gave some light-hearted thought to stealing one of Joe’s signature moves after the match. Read those comments here. 

Learn more about the working relationship between WWE and TNA here. 

Check out the full interview with Joe Hendry embedded above.