Joe Hendry wanted the chance to share the ring with “The Greatest of All-Time” before he wrapped up his legendary WWE career in 2025.
It never happened.
During a recent interview with Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful, the former NXT World Champion spoke about being grateful to be part of the final-ever show in WWE for John Cena, and how he was motivated after not getting the chance to share the ring with him before his “The Last Tiem Is Now” tour wrapped up.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On being grateful to be part of the farewell show in WWE for John Cena: “What I will say, I was super grateful to be a part of the last show. That was a really incredible experience. I got to talk to John there and I was there for when he did his last speech to the locker room. So to be there for that was pretty incredible, as well as appear on the show, to walk out at the end of the show as well to watch John’s last moments as an active WWE competitor, that was very special. So I was very grateful to be a part of it. It’s one of those things that I have to say that I think everything happens for a reason. There’s part of me that wonders, maybe it had to happen that way. Maybe the match had to not happen for me to [appreciate that] you can’t expect every surprise moment to go your way.”
On not having the opportunity to face Cena in his ‘The Last Time Is Now’ tour motivating him even more during his run in NXT: “I think lit a fire under me actually, because it made me realize that, I guess, my goal was to face John Cena and because it didn’t happen, I was like, ‘Right, well, I need to take this to the next level now.’ I think it motivated me even more. I think the approach I took with going to NXT is I was in the Performance Center every day. I was doing the classes. It was not something that I had to do; it was something that I wanted to do. I really just tried to immerse myself in NXT as much as possible. I think going in with that, [I embraced] NXT to learn how WWE works. I feel I got like extra motivation because sometimes I think if everything just comes to you easily, maybe someone might take it for granted. So I just took it as extra motivation to go, ‘Alright, you know what? I need to dig even deeper to get these big moments to continue to happen.’”
JOE HENDRY & R-TRUTH TAKE OUT THE MIZ
JOE PINS MIZ AND R-TRUTH COUNTS THE PIN 😭#SNME pic.twitter.com/WTEGoMsipF
— The Movement – Pro Wrestling (@TheMovementXx) December 14, 2025
