New WWE NXT World Champion Joe Hendry appeared as a guest on Busted Open After Dark for an interview.
The following are some of the highlights:
On capturing the WWE NXT World Championship: “I’m feeling so many different emotions. I have so much to say, and I will do my best to get it out here coherently, but… in my life, we have different goals, different challenges and this particular championship means so much to me. This championship represents what the last six, eight months here full-time at the Performance Center has been for me. I made the choice to come here to WWE and I made the choice to come and train at NXT. I get in the ring every day with those top-level, first-class athletes and I knew I had to push my cardio and my conditioning to a new level and I knew I just had to keep acquiring new skills and there were days when it was just so tough and I just felt like I was just pushing things forward inch by inch and there were moments where I was frustrated, I wanted to progress and then, things just started to click, and I started to learn more and more and more and when you’re around this environment at the P.C. every day, you can’t help but get better, and that was my only goal, was just to get as good as I could possibly be at professional wrestling because the last couple of years was a marketing exercise for me, right? It was to tell the world who Joe Hendry is and now, the journey was for me to step up to a championship-caliber athlete that can go to the very top of this business and in order to do that, I had to truly humble myself and I’ve been training every day, giving absolutely everything, and you know, to have that goal realized and actualized in this championship title that’s been held by some of the most prestigious names in the business. I’m so honored and privileged to represent this brand.”
On his efforts to get a match against John Cena on “The Last Time Is Now” retirement tour: “I tried. I tried (to make the match with John Cena happen) … So, this is interesting. It’s a tough game to play — that one — because there is you have to be bold but within the — there are guidelines that you must respect. What you don’t want to do in this business is to go into business for yourself, and so anything that I did to try and get that — for example, you remember when I did the billboard? So I put my face up on the billboard next to a WWE show when they were in Glasgow. That, to me, was something that was fun that didn’t interfere with business. I felt I gave everything that I could that was respectful. I didn’t wanna make it about me, because it’s John Cena’s retirement tour and I was very honored to be a part of that last show. I can’t tell you how much it meant for me to be one of the roster members to walk down to be there in John’s last moments in the ring. To have a moment to talk to him and I came back through the curtain. The advice that he gave me at Royal Rumble and then to tell me that he felt I took that advice at WrestleMania and executed it well, and then to be in the locker room when he made his final speech to the locker room, I was so proud and grateful to be a part of those moments. I’m a great believer that things are supposed to work out the way that they work out and I’ll be completely honest with you, I said if I get that match, it’s on me. If I don’t get that match, it’s on me. Perhaps I didn’t take myself to where I needed to get to to guarantee that match, to secure it. But maybe, that’s what made me regroup and go, you know what? We’re going back to basics. I’m going training every day, and the amount that I’ve advanced in a six-month period, I’m so excited for the fans to continue to see this. I just continue to get better and maybe if I’d just got the John Cena match, maybe that ego would have came back and it’s like, well, everything I manifest comes true. Maybe I needed to not get the John Cena match to get what’s gonna come next.”
On giving TNA everything he had and his decision to jump-ship to WWE: “I will say this: I gave being TNA World Champion everything I — I gave everything to that company that I absolutely had. [But yes,] Absolutely. That’s the goal. Absolutely… I came to WWE because this was the dream. This is genuinely what it was is I felt like I had achieved the goal at TNA and I felt like in order for me to grow, it was time. It was time. It wasn’t gonna be in a year. If I can say I feel I’ve done one thing well, it’s knowing when it’s time and it was finally time for me to make the move because I felt like I’d acquired enough skills to be successful here and now I’m just acquiring more skills at NXT. It was the right time to go.”
(H/T to Andrew Thompson and Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.)
