When Drew McIntyre made deadlines for celebrating TNA star Joe Hendry for being an entertaining presence and valuable member of the TNA roster in a recent interview with Cultaholic, no one was more excited by the admission than the “The Prestigious One” himself, Joe Hendry.

Sure, Hendry doesn't necessarily need McIntyre to put him over, as he did have one of the top songs on iTunes in the UK a few weeks back and has been put over by Xavier Woods for his unique approach to combining music and grappling, but getting put over by the most prominent Scottish wrestler in the world today, especially on the eve of Clash at the Castle, clearly meant a ton to the TNA wrestler, so much so that, in a follow-up interview with Cultaholic, he celebrated the “Scottish Warrior” not just for his kind words but for being a locker room leader during their time together in ICW.

“It hasn't really sunk in yet, to be honest. Drew is just an absolute credit to our business,” Hendry told Cultaholic. “When I was fortunate enough to share locker rooms with him up and down the UK in ICW and WhatCulture Pro Wrestling, he was the leader, he lifted the shows. He was such a leader inside the ring and outside the ring. He's always been someone who has been kind to me, he's always been generous with advice… I couldn't be happier for what he's doing. He has just earned every ounce of success that he has. “So for him to say that about me, it means an incredible amount. And in the same way that he's showing leadership in WWE, I wanted to step up and do what he's doing and I want to do it in TNA.”

McIntyre, much like Hendry before him, became privy to this Cultaholic interview and, in an X repost, decided to comment on the comments of his former locker room chum, letting him know that he tries to lead by example instead of by being a boisterous presence who is a leader in name alone.

“I appreciate the kind words but I've never called myself a locker-room leader. I've never felt the need to. I turn up. I do the best job I can. I offer advice to those who ask for it. And then there's our Champion who can't control 3 people in his own stable and the other guy who's only ever took from our industry…”

Wow, and even a subtle shot at Damian Priest in his response, too; you've gotta give it to McIntyre: he really is shooting on all cylinders ahead of the biggest show of his career.

Joe Hendry didn't want to perform “Can You Please Get Fired?” in TNA.

Speaking of Joe Hendry's success in TNA, “The Prestigious One” discussed his live concerts in the Impact Zone, revealing that he didn't initially want to perform his reworked cover of Creed's “Higher” during his program with AJ Francis, as he not only didn't own an acoustic guitar but didn't want to draw comparisons to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who performed a similar segment on SmackDown in Memphis around the same time.

“For the live concert (I did in TNA), that is the most pressure I've felt in such a long time because here's the thing, I hadn't played acoustic guitar since 2015. So when I was asked to do that, I had to buy an acoustic guitar and learn how to play guitar properly again because I did the guitars in my entrance song. But I only do enough guitars to play the parts, do you know what I mean? So it's like, I'll literally learn, ‘What's this solo again?' And I'll practice at my leisure when I'm sitting down in the studio where I can make unlimited mistakes, but to actually be good enough to do a live concert? And so, the parody that we did of the Creed song as well, that song is quite a complexed song for one guitar, because you've got the lead riff, and of course I'm like, ‘How am I gonna play both at the same time?' When Creed plays it, there's like two guitars. So, this is all going through my head. But I knew in my heart that my career would never be the same again if that went well or badly,” Joe Hendry explained via 411 Mania.

“When I was asked to do the concert, I initially said no, because that was one of the reasons. Because I was like, ‘The Rock just did this,' and the Toronto segment, the original one — The Rock's my favorite wrestler of all-time. That segment in Toronto is one of my favorite all-time segments and I just thought, if I had to go out there and sing a couple of songs, what can I do to even put this in the same conversation? And then the conversation developed and it turned out, ‘Well actually, we might be able to use a copyrighted song' and then the conversation became, ‘Well, if we're gonna do a copyrighted song, it has to be something that's synonymous with wrestling. A band that everyone knows.' So it had to be a Limp Bizkit or Evanescence or something like that, and then Creed came up, and then it was like, write, and then we got the hook with the, ‘Can you take me higher? Can you please get fired?' Then we were like, ‘Okay, we might have something.' But, I cannot tell you the pressure… I thought, what can I control? And I got, in my view, the best guitar money can buy. The best guitar that money can buy. It cost me like two-and-half grand.

“So beyond that, in my view, it's just, oh, limited edition this and preference and all that, right? So it's a Martin Guitar. It's a solid one-piece Martin Guitar. In my view, I was like, you can't get better… because you know when you see live music segments, a lot of them don't sound brilliant. I don't mean in wrestling, I mean in general. You'll be watching a BBC concert or T in the Park or something, and then something will just be off or something. So I was like, what can I control? So I'll get the best guitar that I possibly can, and then so, I take the guitar with me, and they wouldn't let me take it on the plane. So I had to hand it over to them. My bags made it, but my guitar didn't, and my guitar didn't arrive on the day for rehearsals… and what people don't know is I've got this food show, I've got matches to do, I've got this, and the guitar's not there. So we didn't get the rehearsal the day before. So when the guitar arrived, and this is when you should always invest because the guitar arrived. You think about it, it'd been in the subzero temperatures in the air. It's been hot in the airport. It's then in the Vegas heat. Open up the case, it was still in tune.”

Fortunately for Hendry, the segment not only went over well but actually went viral and helped to elevate his stock even future inside and out of the wrestling sphere. And the best part? Important people are starting to take notice too.