When Paul “Triple H” Levesque became the new creative lead in charge of the WWE Universe, his first course of action was re-signing WWE Superstars, especially the ones that the company's president, Nick Khan, released during the pandemic to save some money. First came Dakota Kai at SummerSlam, then came the late, great Bray Wyatt at Extreme Rules, and finally CM Punk at Survivor Series, with more than a dozen other Superstars filling out the ranks between those three shows.
And yet, while it seemed like anyone who crossed paths with Triple H in a meaningful way, from working on the main roster to spending time together in NXT developmental, was offered a chance to cash checks from Titan Towers once more, one performer who didn't get the call was one of the most prominent releases on the independent scene, Matt Cardona, a cruel blow considering his own wife, Chelsea Green, was re-hired and just lost her WWE Woman's Tag Team Championship after an… unusual run with the belt.
Discussing how it felt to be left out from this WWE renaissance in an interview with Chris Van Vliet on Insight, Cardona explained that it did hurt not to get the call, but he doesn't let that negativity drag him down.
“I mean, I’ll be honest when all those people got rehired, I was thinking, not me? The guy who has been doing everything?” Matt Cardona said via EWrestling News. “What was the prerequisite to getting re-signed, not doing anything? Besides like Chelsea and like The Good Brothers, and a handful of others, most people didn’t do anything. But that’s fine. Everyone has a different path, a different story. Do you have a chip on my shoulder about that? I wouldn’t say a chip, like a little crumb. But listen, this isn’t about proving people wrong. It’s about proving myself right. My fans right. If I can convert some doubters and get some new fans along the way, so be it. You know, but I can’t have this goal of being the absolute best with like negativity driving it, if that makes sense.”
So, if Cardona were contacted by WWE about coming back, would he consider accepting a new deal with the promotion? Maybe yes, maybe no, but if he did return, it wouldn't be under the Zack Ryder moniker, as, in Cardona's opinion, he's grown past the gimmick.
“I say this all the time. This isn’t my Honky Tonk Man run. I wasn’t going to just tour the indies with the headband, the glasses, ‘Woo Woo Woo.' This is like my reinvention. This is my Hollywood Hogan run. If anything. But I knew I needed to change I knew like Zack. Listen, so, so grateful for WWE, for Zack Ryder. That was my dream. I lived it. Highest of highs, lowest of lows. I’m forever grateful for that time. It set me up for who I am today. But it’s over. Zack Ryder is dead. And if I ever want to go back to WWE if it was up to me, it’d be as Matt Cardona.”
Would it be cool to see Cardona back in the WWE Universe? Sure thing, but when you consider he wouldn't be allowed to do much of, if any, of the wacky gimmicks that have made Cardona the go-to guy on the indies over the past few years, one has to wonder if the trade-off would even be worth it.
Matt Cardona reveals the match that made his post-WWE career.
Elsewhere in his conversation with Chris Van Vliet on Insight, Matt Cardona was asked about his match with Nick Gage, a bout that now, only a few years later, has gone on to become one of the defining moments of not only GCW but of the 2020 indies as a whole.
While Cardona wasn't initially sure if the match was in his best interests, as Gage does have a well-earned reputation on the indies for a reason, in the end, he decided to do the match precisely because he thought fans would want to see it and his intuition was proven correct to a degree few could have even imagined.
“So John Carlo, my friend John Carlo, who was working for GCW at the time. Worked for WWE, now works for AEW, he pitched it to me. I said, ‘Absolutely f**king not!' I am not wrestling, because Nick Gage was just on Dark Side of the Ring. He almost killed David Arquette in the ring, criminal, drug addict, I'm not wrestling this guy! And then I took a step back and said, ‘Wait a minute. People are going to watch this.' People are going to talk about this. They're going to want to see Zack Ryder carved up by Nick Gage. So let's do it. And it was only a three-shot deal. Three shows: Go in [and] attack Nick Gage. Have the match, and the one show after,” Matt Cardona explained via SE Scoops.
“I think we changed independent wrestling. I say we because GCW needed to be GCW, I needed to be me, and Nick Gage needed to be Nick Gage. We needed all of those ingredients. It's an independent show in Atlantic City, New Jersey. But it trended number one over the UFC pay-per-view that night and the Olympics. Which is nuts. We had captured lightning in a bottle, I use that expression all the time. We had it, and I just ran with it.
What would Cardona's career have looked like on the indies if he hadn't embraced being the Ex-WWE guy in GCW? Would he have taken over for MJF in Cody Rhodes' posse in AEW? Stuck with his best friend Brian Myers in Impact? Or even been re-signed by WWE to re-do his old gimmick? Fortunately, fans don't have to worry about it, as they instead get to enjoy Cardona's current run, which might just go down as an all-timer in independent wrestling history.
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