Randy Orton details how Joe Hendry was chosen as WWE WrestleMania opponent

In an interview with Billboard, Randy Orton detailed how his WWE WrestleMania 41 match against Joe Hendry came to be.

Orton vs. Kevin Owens was originally scheduled for the event and had even been officially announced by WWE, but plans had to change with Owens having a neck injury requiring surgery. With that grudge match off the books, WWE pivoted to something else entirely with Orton defeating Hendry — the TNA World Champion — in a quick three-minute bout.

This was Orton’s 20th WrestleMania, and he told Billboard that was an important milestone for him. He confirmed that he pushed for Hendry to be his opponent once a replacement was needed. Orton said a couple of people in WWE were unsure about the idea, but he was able to talk them into it.

“It kind of came down to, ‘OK. We need to get Orton an opponent. Who’s it gonna be?’ And there was a very short list of guys on our own roster, but we had some new guys coming in — and it was one of those things where I needed to win, but considering we knew where I was going to be going thinking about Backlash, we needed me to look good coming out of Mania,” Orton said. “It couldn’t be one of our new guys, because when we debut a new talent into the show [we couldn’t] have him start with a loss.

“So we put our heads together and it was actually my idea [for it to be] Joe Hendry. I kept pushing for it, and a couple people were unsure, but I was able to talk everybody into it. I’m really glad that they went with him. It was perfect. It was different from anything else on the card. It was a legitimate surprise, and we were able to keep it a surprise for the most part. We got that really cool, ‘Holy s–t’ moment when his music hit, and it was great. He was great. It was actually a stress-free fun Mania for me, because I didn’t have this crazy 30 minutes balls-to-the-walls match with all this high-risk s–t. I had this cool little segment with Joe, and we didn’t have to do much to have fun out there. So I was really able to enjoy the week and just soak it all up.”

Rusev and Aleister Black were two of the in-house options that WWE had making their returns. Both returned to WWE programming after WrestleMania.

Hendry is proud of the match he had with Orton and thinks it went exactly how it should have gone. A TNA World Championship defense will take place at NXT Battleground on Sunday, May 25 with Hendry putting his title on the line against Trick Williams.

At WWE Backlash this Saturday, Orton will renew his rivalry with John Cena when he challenges Cena for the Undisputed WWE Championship. It will likely be their last time ever facing each other with Cena set to retire from the ring in December 2025.

Orton told Billboard that he hopes his hometown crowd in St. Louis brings the energy for this different dynamic of him being the babyface and Cena being the heel.

“Now, it has the potential to be completely opposite of how it used to be, and the pressure is on me as the good guy,” he said. “But I think being in the hometown [of St. Louis], him being the bad guy, it’s just really weird. There’s no way to call it — and I think the match itself will be good, but I think the energy in that arena is going to cause it to be possibly very good. It’s completely up to the energy of that St. Louis crowd. So I’m hoping they’re all ready to go.”

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