They did it. Insane Championship Wrestling, delivered a top quality, high energy, dramatic, dynamic and at times brutal megashow in the form of Fear & Loathing IX at Glasgow's SSE Hydro. They beamed all around the world through FITE TV and broke the record for the biggest UK wrestling event in decades. Its difficult to adequately describe the excitement of the show and the wrestling world is still on a high. Of course, readers wanting to feed off the buzz can see the show in its entirety through ICW On Demand and don't forget to book tickets for Fear & Loathing X which has already been announced for November 19 2017, with tickets onsale Friday 25 November (details here).
The first match of the night at F&L IX saw Davey Blaze and Joe Hendry go toe-to-toe. We were lucky enough to speak with Hendry about his time at ICW and those entrance videos of his. Read on and get your tickets for ICW - we'll see you in Glasgow 2017!
For those who haven't yet seen you in action, can you explain a bit about Joe Hendry?
I started wrestling in 2013 and it's been a crazy, crazy journey since then. I've had a short but amazing time in this business. I am a singer and a wrestler, so I combine the two in my act, that's what I do. I also wear a lot of gold because I feel that's the only colour you can associate with a champion like myself. I do all my own entrance songs to get in the head of my opponents as well.
We wanted to ask you about that - do you write all the songs yourself?
Well I certainly don't borrow from any other artists, or anything like that.....! Yep, yep, I do. I do lots of parodies of different artists. I did 'Wrecking Ball' but instead I had it as 'Hendry-Ball' and I rode to the ring in an inflatable zorb. That was a unique day, rolling down the ramp in a zorb. I came out to Phil Collins and had a guy dressed in a gorilla suit doing the drum solo. I've done the Venga Boys, Eastenders and even the Toys 'R Us theme. Nothing and no-one is safe from my entrance.
I'll usually have an idea of what I'm going to do and me and my brother work on it a little and I bounce ideas off him. He films it with my phone and we just edit it together quickly. Getting the idea is the tough bit of it. There's times where it will take me a week, two weeks even a month, sometimes it's been the morning of and I'm like "what am I going to do!" and it just comes to me and you can do it in three or four hours. Those are the real stressful times though. I think that's like anything in wrestling or creative, it's that core idea. What's the story you want to tell? As soon as you nail that down, everything else falls into place.
What's your strangest fan interaction been?
A fan made a parody of a Joe Hendry parody and I met him for the first time today. Fair play to him for doing it, I've done it to a lot of people and I've had it done to me a few times now. I have to take it on the chin.
Would you like to add to the list of ICW alumni - Noam Dar, Big Damo, Drew Galloway - wrestling for the major US companies?
In my heart, I 100% believe that I'll be the WWE champion. No doubt about it. I've debuted for Ring of Honor which I'd really been looking forward to. RoH is a fantastic company. I went over to America to train with them and that's how it came about. I'm always looking to evolve and learn new styles. I got some training from the likes of Steve Corino, Adam Cole, Jay Lethal, Christopher Daniels, the Briscoe Brothers. It was stacked, the whole roster was there. It was cool because I got to go over there and I hadn't worked with them before. I got to focus on what I was doing, show them what I was about and then I had the chance to wrestle with the company.
Tell us about your relationship with ICW
ICW gave me a platform. Without it, this wouldn't really be happening for me. To be honest, I'm the kind of person, when I have something set in my head, I'm going to do it. I would have got to this goal eventually but ICW gave me the platform. The best thing about ICW is the roster though, it's so good. I'm lucky to be around a lot of experienced guys who have helped me become one of them, become a peer much quicker than it would have been had I just been wrestling everywhere I could. Now I'm fortunate to be working with some of the best wrestlers in the world - I just wrestled Kurt Angle.
How was wrestling Angle?
After my match against Kurt Angle I expressed to him my enthusiasm about amateur wrestling and we talked about it and I may be getting some help with coaching. So Mr. Angle is becoming a bit of a mentor for me. He's going to help me get some contacts and go over there. They say don't meet your heroes but that was the opposite. He couldn't have been cooler. He was the man. The positivity and experience he brings has benefited ICW.
Joe Hendry isn't the only man to have faced the Olympic hero and we'll soon have an interview with Joe Coffey, the man who just did at Fear & Loathing. Keep tuned for more of our ICW exclusives and make sure to follow Joe Hendry on Twitter here. A future World champion for certain.