Joe Hendry cleverly managed to get himself booked against Kurt Angle in WCWP.
The Scottish star wrestled Angle just one year into his wrestling career. It was a fantastic achievement, but Joe Hendry vs Kurt Angle was a match he had to fight for. They wrestled at WCPW Refuse to Lose 2016, in one of Joe Hendry’s best matches of his career.
Joe Hendry recently appeared on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, where he talked about his match against Kurt Angle in WCPW.
The TNA star revealed how a fan asking him who his dream match was got the ball rolling for the match against the WWE legend. He noted that he talked to WCPW, who financed the match, but made sure that they made Hendry the top heel in the company following the bout.
They agreed, and Joe Hendry vs Kurt Angle was set.
“So a fan asked me, but what’s your dream match? I thought, and I answered it. ‘Well, just like a one-off match’, and I went ‘Kurt Angle’. I tagged him thinking nothing of it. Angle DM’d me in 2015, a trainee. He says, ‘Listen, I’ve heard your name, I’ve seen a couple of things’. Because I think at that point, I’d done like my first viral entrance. I came to the ring to “Wrecking Ball”, but I came to the ring in a zorb as a “Hendry Ball”. So Kurt said, ‘I know who you are and you’re not ready yet, but maybe one day, you’ll get the match’. And I was like, ‘Wow!’.”
“I said, ‘Okay, Kurt, if I had a financier to pay for a match, what would you need?’ And he told me what he needs. Then I went and I sat down with these two multimillionaires, I walked into the boardroom and I said, ‘Thanks for meeting. You guys tried to get Kurt Angle, didn’t you?’ I said ‘What did he say?’ knowing what he said. And they went ‘he said, No.’ I went ‘I can get you Kurt, but if I get him, I need both your word that I wrestle him, and I’m the top guy after that.’ And they were like, ‘alright,’ they shook my hand.”
Joe Hendry: Kurt Angle Loved His Parody Entrance Song
Joe Hendry breathed a sigh of relief when he learned Kurt Angle loved his parody entrance song for their match.
It is always a risk that a wrestler would get offended by these songs, but Kurt Angle is a pro. Hendry sang a parody of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”, titled “Not as good as Joe Hendry” for his match against Angle.
The joke was clearly that Angle was an American hero, so Hendry picked the most American song he could to make fun of him. Luckily, the WWE Hall of Famer loved the song, and they went on to have a great match, with Jim Ross calling it on commentary.
“I was standing opposite Kurt Angle, we’re in a sold-out building and I look over and there’s Jim Ross and Jim Cornette commentating in the main event of an internet pay-per-view, and I’m looking at Kurt Angle and my family is on the balcony. I’m looking at it and I go ‘Is this happening? Am I facing Kurt Angle in the main event of a pay-per-view with Jim Ross to Jim Cornette commentating? Is that what’s happened here?’ I’ll tell you this, Kurt is the man. When I made the entrance video for him, I threw his metals in the bin, I shredded him and I was like, ‘Oh, God, like, I hope he’s okay with this.’ And he loved it.”
