Joe Hendry shares story about how he once “messed up a WWE tryout worse than anyone ever has”

So yeah, we do the tryout, and we’re getting a bunch of feedback. William Regal is telling us, ‘You’ve done a good job. Need to focus on physiques. You need to focus on your technique.’ I’m thinking, all right, cool.

So I go into catering. All the other guys are talking about how good the cake is in catering. I’m like, these guys—we’ve just been told to work on our physiques, and they’re eating cake. I’m going to show them that I’m eating rice and chicken. He’s going to see that, and he’s going to go, ‘He’s coachable.’

So I’m sitting there with my rice and chicken. William Regal comes down and sits with us all. This is the awesome thing about William Regal—he sat down with us for like two hours and just told us, this is what wrestling is. I can remember almost every word that he said, and it helps me to this day.

But the main point was that being a wrestler is about building trust with the audience, so when the audience sees you, they know they’re going to get value. They’re going to be entertained. It’s not just the big wins, like we talked about—the pay-per-views and the TVs—it’s the house shows, the fan interactions, it’s everything. He made me realize that about the business.

But while he’s giving us these amazing lessons, I’m sitting there with my chicken and rice, and he’s in the middle of this very impassioned speech. While I’m chewing, this little piece of rice just falls down the back of my throat, and I try to clear my throat a little bit to get rid of it… and I inhale the piece of rice.

So now I’m in a situation where I’ve got two choices, right? I can either just cough and interrupt the story—‘Oh, sorry, my bad’—and move on. Or I can say, you know what? I’m going to try and clear my throat silently.

So he’s telling this story, and I go, I’m going to do that… and I just end up accidentally inhaling another eight grains of rice.

So he’s telling this story, and I’m sitting there like… [struggling to breathe]. The guy sitting next to me is like, ‘What are you doing? He’s in the middle of a story.’

I basically spat rice all over the table where everyone’s eating while he’s telling this story. So from his perspective, he’s telling this big speech, and I’ve just gone, ‘Oh yeah…’ [coughs up rice].

So maybe that was the reason. Who knows?

But no—he sold it beautifully. He just says, ‘Can’t take you anywhere, Joe,’ and then walked off.

So that was comedy gold.”