Joe Hendry Never Expected To Replace Kevin Owens at WrestleMania 41, Thought He Might Team With Jey Uso in Scotland

– During a recent interview with Insight With Chris Van Vliet, TNA World Champion Joe Hendry discussed becoming the surprise replacement for Kevin Owens against Randy Orton for Orton’s match at WrestleMania 41. Below are some highlights (via Fightful):

Joe Hendry on not expecting to replace Kevin Owens at WrestleMania 41: “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.”

On the social media game: “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.”

On sometimes tweeting with emotion and not with logic: “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.’”

Henry on waiting between three to five months: “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.”

Joe Hendry defends his TNA World Title later this month at WWE NXT Battleground 2025. The premium live event is scheduled for Sunday, May 25 at the Yuengling Center in Tampa, Florida. It will air live on Peacock in the U.S. and on Netflix internationally.