WWE apparently spent part of the summer asking people around the company to come up with some completely new tag teams. They weren’t just asking the creative department either — staffers from different areas got to play fantasy booker, and Joe Hendry’s name kept coming up.
Speaking on WrestleVotes Radio on Fightful Select, Joey Votes revealed that WWE ran the unusual brainstorming exercise during the summer of 2026. The company asked employees across multiple departments to throw together wrestlers they thought could work as new teams.
“In speaking with the source, we’ve learned that at one point over the summer, WWE tasked a handful of staffers amongst various departments with coming up with different talent pairings to potentially form new tag teams.”
There apparently weren’t many rules to this thing either. Raw, SmackDown and NXT rosters were all fair game, and employees were specifically encouraged to get weird with it rather than just putting together the most obvious combinations.
“Were told there were no brand restrictions in place for the exercise, but those involved encouraged to think outside the box and explore a wide range of possible combinations in an effort to bolster a somewhat lacking division. According to that source, the name of Joe Hendry was mentioned numerous times.”
That makes Hendry the most interesting part of this whole exercise. WrestleVotes didn’t reveal exactly who employees wanted to pair him with, but apparently enough people had the same basic thought that his name showed up numerous times.
TC pointed to WWE’s recent willingness to experiment with odd-couple teams, including Damian Priest and R-Truth. He also wondered whether Hendry’s pairing with Danhausen could have come from similar thinking, although there’s no confirmation that particular team came from this summer exercise.
That naturally turned into the hosts doing a little fantasy booking themselves. TC liked the idea of putting Hendry beside somebody more serious, similar to the dynamic WWE found with Randy Orton and Matt Riddle in RK-Bro, while Joey threw LA Knight into the mix.
“But if you told me that Joe Hendry and La Knight were a tag team and they were going to go for the tag team titles and win them and be featured every week, I think people would get behind that. I would hate it. I know a lot of people would hate it because that might be the end of La Knight, but worse things have happened.”
It’s pretty wild that WWE was essentially asking people outside the usual creative circle to start mixing and matching wrestlers to see what stuck. Nothing says every suggestion is getting anywhere near television, but if Hendry’s name kept showing up on different people’s lists, somebody backstage clearly thinks there’s an interesting tag team waiting to be found.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
Do you think WWE should move Joe Hendry into a tag team instead o a WWE single's star? Please share your thoughts and feedback in the comment section below.
