Joe Hendry was afraid one social media post could ruin his chances of a WrestleMania match.
Randy Orton was originally scheduled to face Kevin Owens at WrestleMania 41 in Las Vegas, but on April 4th, Owens announced that he needed to undergo neck surgery for a severe injury and the WrestleMania match was off. On the April 18th edition of SmackDown, Orton announced that he would be issuing an open challenge for someone to face him at WrestleMania, leading to plenty of speculation as to who his opponent would be.
On the night, fans were shocked and delighted to see Orton’s open challenge answered by TNA Champion Joe Hendry, and Orton has since explained why he personally pushed to face Hendry.
Speaking in a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet, Joe Hendry was asked if he expected to be chosen as Orton’s opponent, and he confirmed that the decision came as a surprise. He also explained that he needs to be careful about stirring up speculation on social media.
“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. 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.”
Joe Hendry Took Down A Tweet Ahead Of WWE WrestleMania
Continuing, Joe Hendry pointed to a specific tweet about Randy Orton that he thought may have ruined his chances to compete on the Grandest Stage of Them All.
“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.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Joe Hendry addressed his contract status with TNA.
Additionally, there has been a rumour killer on Cody Rhodes plans.
h/t Fightful