Joe Hendry thinks his NXT debut last week was “unbelievable”.
The Scottish star was a shock entrant in a battle royal on last week’s episode of NXT. The TNA star’s surprise entrance caught the crowd off guard, who pooped huge seeing the wrestler making his first appearance in the WWE.
Despite never having wrestled for the company, NXT fans sang along with every word of his entrance. Hendry looked emotional on the ramp as he received his ovation. The clip has quickly become one of the most-viewed WWE clips this year, receiving over 7 million hits so far.
Joe Hendry recently spoke with Busted Open Radio (transcription thanks to Fightful) about his NXT debut. He said his emotional moment was him thanking the fans, and that being one of the most liked videos since WrestleMania was “unbelievable”.
“What’s interesting about it is, it’s not how we usually do the entrance. I was looking forward to experiencing the NXT production to see how they would want to do it. I started very similar to how (Chris) Jericho started with turning around. I’m there for a little longer. I hadn’t really prepared for how long that would feel in real time.”
“There was about 20 seconds where I was like, ‘I can take this in.’ The comments, people said you could see the genuine moment I had with the crowd. That’s me going, ‘Thanks guys. Thank you.’ I feel the fans had my back that day. I go stand out there before I turn around, and I heard gasps. If you watch the video, you can see the camera shake. For that to be WWE’s most liked video since WrestleMania. To be able to do that representing TNA is unbelievable. I have not processed it yet,”.
Joe Hendry continued. The Scottish star called his debut “total validation”, and that more people knew his song than he ever expected.
He even revealed that people backstage were expecting a big reaction, as Hendry realized he was more popular than he first thought.
“One of the advantages of it happening so quickly is that I didn’t have time to overthink that aspect of it. This has absolutely exceeded all expectations in all ways. I started to think ‘this could be a moment’ when there were people who work at the PC [WWE Performance Center] and other stars at the PC, a lot of them were talking about my song. A couple of the producers were saying they expected a big reaction. I started to get the rumbling that more people knew the song and my act that I realized. I still didn’t think it would get that over. It doesn’t feel real. It’s total validation.”
