Years of work for Joe Hendry are beginning to pay off big time.
Scottish wrestler Hendry has become a buzzing name in the wrestling scene as of late, making him one of the most popular talents in TNA Wrestling and scoring him a pair of appearances on WWE NXT episodes. He was the big surprise on this week’s edition of the show in particular, receiving a massive pop when revealed to be the surprise teammate for Trick Williams against Ethan Page and Shawn Spears.
It’s arguably been the biggest year yet for Hendry, who has been grinding out a wrestling career for more than a decade now. The former TNA Digital Media Champion reflected on his recent run of success in an interview with Fightful.
“It’s everything you want it to be,” said Hendry on his success. “Let me put this to you. How crazy is this: Signed to TNA, get to work NXT. At the same time can still do cool indies and stuff like that. You get to travel the world … The other week when Jeff Hardy came back [to TNA] and I’m in the ring and we’re all together, and I’m like ‘What is going on?’ It was all worth it. All the struggle, everything. It was all worth it.”
Hendry has highly focused on character work throughout his career. He has been known for creating parody songs to build up angles throughout his career, with some tracks dating back to when he was a regular in Scottish promotion ICW. After years of presenting a similar style of character, Hendry reflected on the benefits of remaining committed to the same style for long.
“I felt like one day it would reach critical mass and people would go back and find the old stuff and think ‘Eh this is pretty entertaining,'” said Hendry on his older work. “I kind of [had] just become okay with it being this niche thing and think ‘Well the people that like it really like it so I’ll keep making it, I’ll keep doing it.’ I feel like wrestling sometimes is like music, a particular genre is popular and then something else is popular … I always encourage people, obviously you have to be mindful of your coaches and the audience and stuff like that, but when it comes to who you are and your act, it has to be wrestling according to you whether it’s in or it’s not. And I felt like I was in it for such a long time where that wasn’t the most popular style of wrestling or it wasn’t in, and it just feels like now my stuff has started to gain traction.”
Hendry mentioned that his plans to be on this week’s NXT TV came together on somewhat short notice, which he liked.
“The thing I love about all this is people as me- Any time something like this happens, everybody hits me up all throughout the week,” he said. “The best part is, I don’t need to lie to anybody because I genuinely don’t know until the last moment [what will happen]. And I love it because if I knew I was going to be doing all these cool things a week or a month in advance, I feel like there’s a danger you can overthink it. When everything just happens, it feels really organic and I think people get those organic reactions.”
