Shayna Baszler on the Bloodsport X card could mark a drastic change in WWE policy.
It’s not just WWE that sets up shop in the WrestleMania host city in early April each year. Most of the pro wrestling world also descends upon the same location, taking advantage of the fact that so many fans are in one place. And while WWE usually tends to ignore the indie shows that swirl around Mania week, that’s changing in a big way this year thanks to today’s announcement that Shayna Baszler will compete in Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport X.
Fightful Select (subscription required) first reported Friday afternoon that “multiple WWE talent will be competing at Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport” — a major break in tradition not just for WrestleMania week, but in WWE policy in general. Superstars are rarely if ever permitted to work elsewhere.
Shortly after that report, Barnett himself confirmed that Baszler would be part of the show on April 4.
What does it mean when a Queen takes up the sword and marches to war?
Blood. Victory. Glory.
From battlefields all over the world – MMA & the @ufc , @WWENXT , @WWE , @wwr_stardom , and more – to now step into a ring she was made for from the beginning.
Baszler is a natural choice for the event. Not only was she trained by Barnett, but her MMA background is tailor made for Bloodsport, which is positioned as a hybrid between MMA and pro wrestling and features hard-hitting but technical matches.
As well, with the Fightful report suggesting more than just Baszler will be involved, it raises the question of whether WWE will allow more talent to compete in other promotions from time to time.
Bloodsport X is also part of the GCW Collective, a group of shows held throughout WrestleMania weekend in Philadelphia that includes Defy, DDT Pro-Wrestling, Progress, Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling and other promotions. Tickets for Bloodsport X are sold out, but limited General Admission ticket packages good for admission to all Collective shows are still available at the time of this post.
Former WWE star Mick Foley shared his heartwarming reason for why he’s “a Swiftie for life.”
Fans of pro wrestlers always want to believe that their favorites are good people as well as talented performers. That’s true of stars in other fields as well, and the more popular, the higher the hopes that celebrities aren’t jerks — and it’s hard to be any more popular right now than Taylor Swift.
The music superstar has somehow managed to be in the spotlight even more over the past few months thanks to her incredibly successful tour, record-setting Grammys night and relationship with Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce. It seems impossible she could keep her head screwed on straight through all of that, right?
Maybe she can. For anecdotal evidence, we turn in an unexpected direction: to the Facebook account of hardcore legend Mick Foley. While Foley says some of his children appreciate Swift’s music more than he does, he’s nevertheless “a Swiftie for life” for the kindness he saw from her in 2007, when Jeff Jarrett was dealing with his first wife’s ultimately unsuccessful battle against cancer.
Foley recalled that someone told him that “Taylor” helped out with Jarrett’s kids during a difficult time … then realized they were talking about Swift.
I’m not even sure who was involved in the conversation with Jeff that I overheard. I believe it was Jeremy Borash… I’m paraphrasing here, but the words were to the effect of “Taylor took the girls out for the day” and how important that time with her was to them. I was literally stunned to find out that the Taylor he had mentioned was Taylor Swift, who in 2007 was already well on her way to being a global superstar, with eponymous 2006 album, “Taylor Swift” several months into an astonishing 157 weeks on the #Billboard200 charts.
As touched as I was by this story, I thought it was a random act of kindness done on a one-time basis. But I came to understand that Taylor, who had become a neighbor of Jeff’s in Hendersonville, Tennessee and was a regular part of the girls lives as they grew up. She did not just take them out for that one day; she was there for them during the most difficult part of their lives. She baked cookies, she sang in their living room, she babysat while Jeff was at his wife’s bedside; she was a true friend and a shining example of kindness when kindness was needed most.
As Jeff himself put it in one of our texts, “Putting the girls in one of her videos (Jeff’s daughter, Jaclyn portrayed young Taylor in the 2010 video “Mine”) is the story most people know. Her spending quality time , baking cookies, talking, just being there, is what’s special. In the middle of her career exploding would have been “a reason” that she was too busy. That young lady is special.”
She truly is. I got tears in my eyes when I read that message from Jeff – and I’m grateful that he has allowed me to share it with all of you.
That’s exactly the kind of thing you want to hear about Swift or anyone on that level of fame. The fact that it has a pro wrestling connection is just the icing on the cake for us.
Mick Foley is considering a deathmatch for his 60th birthday, though he doubts it would be in WWE.
A lot of us started 2024 thinking about the typical resolutions, like losing weight or getting in better shape. There probably aren’t many people, though, who want to drop a whole bunch of weight so they can be in a pro wrestling deathmatch.
Mick Foley isn’t most people. The pro wrestling icon and WWE Hall of Famer hasn’t appeared in a WWE ring since the 2021 Royal Rumble, and hasn’t taken part in a match of any kind since 2015, but he’s entertaining the idea of getting back in shape with a special target in mind: his 60th birthday.
Foley will hit the big 6-0 next summer, in June 2025, and as he explained on the final episode of his podcast, Foley is Pod, he’d like to lose 100 pounds so he can take part in a deathmatch to celebrate the occasion.
You know, like we all do.
“Sixty’s right around the corner, I’m gonna do one final match for my 60th birthday,” Foley said. “Deathmatch.”
“I’m not kidding,” he said when asked if he was joking by co-host Conrad Thompson. “It’d be a great incentive to drop those hundred big ones. And I think it might be fun.”
One thing he did say was not to expect his final match to take place in WWE, which might not have the stomach for what he has in mind.
“No, no, I don’t think so, because I think it would be a pretty gory spectacle.”
Foley said it’s just a thought for the moment, but one that he’s run by two of his children.
It didn’t take long for fans to show up in the podcast’s comments on social media to suggest potential opponents for Foley, including AEW star Jon Moxley. Matt Cardona, perhaps the top name on the indies and no stranger to deathmatches, also appeared to throw his hat in the ring.
There will undoubtedly be a segment of wrestling fandom hoping that Foley reconsiders, given his age and what he’s already given of his physical well-being to entertain people over the years. Still, as a one-off way to ride into the sunset of an incredible career, there’s no denying the thrill it might provide to see Foley get hardcore one last time.
An examination of how WWE, AEW and other promotions booked women in 2023 found no one offender but no shining star, either.
Women in sports, and more specifically women in wrestling, face a long path to equality and equity when compared to their counterparts. Progress depends greatly on willing promoters. Promoters need the willingness, fans need patience.
Slow progress is still progress, but in a time when other women’s sports are seeing an increase in attendance and viewership, the positioning of women’s wrestling stays relatively fixed and constant.
Diario AS shared that 4.85 million people watched the 2022 women’s NCAA final game; an 18% increase from the previous year. When considering “traditional” sports, 49% of fans are women.
The numbers for WWE’s audience don’t stray too far, according to PlayToday; 40% of WWE’s audience in 2020 were women.
Surely wrestling companies with weekly programming would want to tap into this audience and follow this trend, right? If more fans are watching women’s sports, it would be safe to assume promotions would respond by featuring their women’s divisions more.
Over the last few years, numbers tell another story.
Before diving into the meat of the analysis, it must be addressed that not everyone is a fan of women’s wrestling. While it’s certainly behind the times to completely avoid women’s sports, it’s not unheard of. Fans are entitled to like what they like and watch what they want to watch.
For women’s wrestling fans, the issue arises when promoters and bookers relay trust and faith in their women’s divisions but fail to deliver results. Women’s wrestling fans, too, are allowed to clamor for the type of wrestling they want. Both advocates and fans want to see a systematic change in how women athletes are presented in media, how much of them we see in the ring and an increase in opportunities that properly represent the talent that exists.
With all of this in mind, in an attempt to see where wrestling waivers, women’s wrestling stats were collected on promotions with weekly or consistent programming that is viewable on television, online subscriptions, streaming platforms or on pay-per-view. To get a proper look at women’s progress in comparison to their male counterparts, the wrestling promotions must have both a women’s division and a men’s division.
Areas where data was collected spells out where, when and how many women were used: wrestling shows, PPVs, rosters, titles and main events.
Show measurements: what percentage of total matches and match time had women, show cards that had zero women’s matches and show cards that had more than two women’s matches.
PPV measurements: what percentage of total PPV matches and PPV match time had women. PPV time and match stats include pre-shows.
Other percentages include how many titles a women can hold in a promotion and how many women were on their roster. The number of main events featuring women for both PPVs and shows were tallied as well. Rosters were pulled from official websites, and a title was added to the women’s percentage if at least one woman has competed for it.
Let’s start the breakdown with a side-by-side comparison between 2022 and 2023 for shows that ran both years. Below are graphs representing yearly changes in percentage of matches and match time that had women present.
From year-to-year, brands stay consistently low. If the goal is 50%, the percentages don’t come close. There’s not much change in either category for any brand. Sure, a year is a short amount of time when creating huge shifts in booking, but stagnant numbers are not promising for the future.
Even more interesting is looking at the two graphs together. NWA increased how many women’s matches it had but the time they got was the same. In 2022 and 2023, the AEW women’s division had, on average, more matches than it had time from bell-to-bell on Dynamite.
Now, what you’re undoubtedly waiting for: a brand-to-brand comparison. The quick comparison graphic below lists stats not shown in the above graphs.
There’s a lot to unpack here. It’s clear from the get-go that no one brand or show is the top dog in women’s wrestling. NXT has a roster to brag about, TNA lets women compete for most of its titles, and ROH has featured at least two women’s matches on every single show card. ROH and Rampage both have a high number of women’s main events on weekly shows. PPV stats are bleaker.
AEW brands all share the same PPV stats because there is no clear brand split. They give women 16.8% of PPV matches and only 9.8% of PPV match time. They’re painful numbers, but they aren’t the only ones. TNA has a women’s roster that makes up 25.4% of its total roster, but are only giving them 16% of total PPV matches.
SmackDown had four shows in 2023 that had zero women’s matches. For a brand that has preached a women’s revolution, the expectation is that it would have women on every show.
MLW says it’s working on building a women’s featherweight division, but besides a few titleholders, has failed to create an actual division — or give the women time on their shows. Twenty-five shows out of 47 had zero women’s matches. MLW would do well to tap into the talent it does have, like current champ Janai Kai, and focus on outreach.
AEW has a well-known issue of failing to book more than one women’s match on a show, and it’s nearly the same for their PPVs. Out of its eight PPVs, five had only one women’s match. For a company with two women’s titles, it’s hard to believe those titles can’t be defended more.
For the most part, the numbers from brand-to-brand are not so different that it would reveal an incredibly problematic company, or a shining example of what a promotion should do with their women.
The real issue stands out like a sore thumb: Women’s wrestling is treated nowhere near equal. Treading around the 25-33% mark, or worse, is not advancing women in sports.
Promotions will argue that the stories outside of the ring matter, too. That’s true — to a point. Many fans want to care about the wrestlers in the ring; they need story and a reason to cheer or boo. As a kayfabe sport, that makes sense. But without women in the ring, we can’t really argue that a company is advancing a women’s sport. At the heart of every fan is a person who wants to see competition: blood, sweat, and a story finished.
The issue carries over year-to-year. How long can we hear promotions boast about their women’s division, their greatness, their talent, and then not give them time? Creating a 50/50 environment for men and women is not easy, especially when a promoter has booked themselves into a brick wall.
How does WWE create opportunities for a healthy 15 women if they can’t book 35 men? How can AEW create room on a card for their women’s division that only makes up 21.8% of their total roster? How does MLW move forward with eight women to their 39 men? It’s not an overnight change, but the changes need to be made if women are to be treated equal.
Why is creating equality in wrestling important? Besides the desire for fairness, sports have a long-reaching influence.
If you’ve ever watched a wrestling show and the camera scans over to a young person smiling bright and big, you’ve seen the reach wrestling has. Young girls have openly told Bianca Belair she’s a role model and they’re happy someone on TV looks like them.
Representation, equality and equity in women’s wrestling starts in the ring. It’s up to the promoters to make that a priority and book with those goals in mind. Sometimes, that means teaching your audience. If they only present what they’ve always presented, the numbers will never increase.
When women are treated as the sideshow, like women in wrestling were for so many years, it communicates that women are not strong and not worthy. Gone are the years of panties and bras matches, but there’s still work to do. Safety, pay, energy, time and faith are the ingredients needed to grow an industry for women in all areas of wrestling. Ingredients we can all share.
It takes patience to see real growth and positive progress. Mindsets and systematic issues don’t improve overnight. Women’s wrestling fans have patience, but are growing restless. It’s time for the revolution to really knock on the door.
Does Matt Riddle understand why WWE let him go? Ahead of his MLW debut, he says he does.
Matt Riddle estimates he hasn’t had this much time off since he was 21 years old.
In the last three months, the now 37-year-old has been paid by WWE to sit at home and do nothing related to professional wrestling thanks to a 90-day non-compete clause that was triggered once the company released him back in September.
Riddle’s release marked the end of a run that featured its share of professional highs and personal lows. The most recent low was an incident at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York that occurred shortly before his release, where Riddle was seen on video being belligerent to airport staff.
The release, although abrupt in nature, was not a complete surprise to Riddle. He understood why.
“I think they were just sick of my shit at times,” he said during a phone interview with Wrestling Junkie.
And there was a lot of excrement to sort through. Between a sexual assault allegation and subsequent lawsuit that was eventually dropped and issues with substance abuse, the sudden end to Riddle’s WWE tenure gave him the time to go home, spend more time with his growing family (he welcomed his fourth child to the world in late 2023), hit the reset button and start anew. It is badly needed, as his reputation amongst wrestling fans has taken a serious hit.
The next chapter of Riddle’s wrestling journey begins at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia on Saturday, Jan. 6, where he is scheduled to face Jacob Fatu at Major League Wrestling’s Kings of Colosseum. It will be Riddle’s first non-WWE match in more than five years.
Also on the card will be an MLW World Heavyweight title bout with Alex Kane defending against Richard Holliday and a match between Japanese wrestling legend Satoshi Kojima and former Impact World Champion Sami Callihan that will air on “MLW Fusion.”
“MLW, before I signed with WWE, was probably the most professional place I worked,” Riddle said. “They were always on the level. I felt like they had great stories and a good process of how they did everything.”
“I think I’m going to be able to show a side of me that I haven’t been able to show in a long, long time,” he later said.
The wrestling landscape is far different from the one Riddle left behind when he signed with WWE in 2018. Back then, the independent scene was thriving, in large part due to up-and-coming wrestlers like Riddle.
Today, the independent scene is still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, and a good chunk of the goodwill Riddle garnered during his time as an independent wrestler has diminished.
The former WWE United States Champion may be looking to start anew, but that does not mean his slate has been completely wiped clean. Riddle’s controversial reputation has followed him to MLW. It has also cast a shadow on his upcoming appearance for New Japan Pro Wrestling, who aired a video of him challenging the iconic Hiroshi Tanahashi to a future match.
The video was posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, and judging by the replies, it is clear that there is at least a portion of the wrestling fan base that has yet to forgive Riddle for his past transgressions.
Matt Riddle(@SuperKingofBros) has issued a huge challenge to Hiroshi Tanahashi at New Year Dash!
Riddle, who began his career in professional wrestling after being fired from UFC for being “a moron,” according to company president Dana White, understands the narrative surrounding him at the moment and chalks some of it up to his own doing. But he also points to members of the wrestling media/zeitgeist, who in his mind, put his name in stories merely as a way to drive engagement and not because it is the cold, hard truth.
It is something that Riddle admits he didn’t always handle well during his time in WWE.
“As a WWE superstar, you know, it’s one of those weird things,” Riddle recalls. “Even when you’re growing up and you’re training to do this stuff and you’re just sitting around with guys that have done it, and they’re like ‘Hey, just be careful, you know, when you’re making it to the top or you’re trying to. People will come out of the woodwork and try to hurt you and try to ruin your career or this, that and the other thing.’
“For me, I’d be like, ‘No way! That’s crazy!’ But then as you grow older and you start working your way up the card and you’re in WrestleManias and everything else, you start to notice that if people don’t get what they want from you, they will try to do that. I feel like that happens more so when you’re under that magnifying glass of a company like WWE. And that’s not a knock on them. It’s a good thing, I guess, in the sense of the attention and stuff like that. But also at the same time with professional wrestling fans — whether you have people writing articles or doing stories — the fans … they believe a lot. ”
“That was the most stressful thing,” he later added. “Anything can be blown out of proportion and look a certain way and you’ve got a bunch of other people speculating on the internet. That was probably the hardest part.”
As an example, Riddle points to a recent report that he cut his hair. Riddle claims he has not cut any inches off his hair and has no idea where the story came from. Riddle says his mother even called him to ask if he had, in fact, cut his hair, to which he said he hadn’t. Judging by the video of Riddle New Japan aired during its New Year Dash event, it looks like he is still sporting his trademark locks.
The way Riddle looks at it, it’s just the latest case of someone wanting to put his name in a story for the wrong reasons.
“Unfortunately, other people look at it differently,” he explained. “Other people aren’t as smart or educated and they’re not me. They don’t live my story or my situation. It’s kind of hard. They just hear what people say. For me, for the most part, I’m not going to go on the internet and defend myself. I feel like, ‘What’s the point?’”
“If it was, I don’t know, not true or exaggerated or whatever it is, I have no idea how I should even go about doing this in 2024. So I kind of just sit back and let people do whatever they want. At the end of the day, people are going to do what they want, and I always look at it as the cream always rises to the top. As long as I work hard and put my best effort forward and I’m nice to people, usually things work out.”
While the haircut story is apparently fake news, the UFC firing, the WWE wellness policy suspensions and eventual firing, and his belligerent behavior at JFK was not. These were, in fact, true events. But what has Riddle taken away from all of this?
“I took away a lot of lessons, but would I go back and change anything? No.” he said. “Everything happens for a reason. Just like when I got fired by the UFC for a reason so I could make it to WWE and I got fired from WWE for a reason so I can do something else.”
“For me, I need the rainy days to enjoy the sunny ones,” he later added.
Mustafa Ali vs. Okada? Ospreay? Vikingo? Cardona? ZSJ? He wants you to get hyped about the possibilities.
Want to see Mustafa Ali wrestle Kazuchika Okada, Will Ospreay, El Hijo del Vikingo or Matt Cardona? He’d like to open you up to those possibilities and more for 2024.
Among a number of other wrestlers released from WWE this year, Ali became a free agent as of today. And he wasted no time dropping a stylish video announcing his “World Tour Campaign,” hinting at potential matchups with some of the best wrestlers in the world.
“You see, our great sport has fallen into the hands of leaders who are corrupt!” Ali says in the video. “Leaders who are selfish! Leaders the kicked down the door of opportunity only to shut that door behind them! And now, with righteous anger in my heart, I am here to announce that I am launching a campaign to rid our sport of these corrupt leaders! I will right their wrongs. And I will be the leader that we need.”
Yes, he really uses that many exclamation points, but as you can see in the video below, they’re warranted.
Matt Riddle may be gearing up for both wrestling and MMA matches next year.
Matt Riddle will be wrestling again soon, but he may also step into another kind of ring or cage next year.
MLW president Cort Bauer revealed today on Busted Open Radio that he had signed Riddle to face Jacob Fatu on a Jan. 6 show at the 2300 Arena (the former ECW Arena) in Philadelphia. It will be a first time ever matchup between the two men.
Riddle has yet to appear in any wrestling promotion since he was released by WWE in late September. Though he was pushed as a fairly big star at times, Riddle’s time with WWE was marked by several violations of the company’s wellness policy and other incidents, including one at JFK Airport earlier this year.
It won’t be the first time Riddle has competed at an MLW event. He’s wrestled on several of the promotion’s cards in 2017-18, facing opponents like Tom Lawlor, Jeff Cobb and current AEW star Swerve Strickland.
Returning to wrestling may not be all Riddle has planned for 2024. A former UFC fighter with an 8-3-2 record in MMA, he may also be entertaining thoughts of unscripted fighting again. Riddle told MMA Junkie’s Nolan King earlier this week that “there’s a very big possibility that I get back in the ring or cage pretty soon.”
His hint toward a ring over a cage suggests Riddle could be considering a fight for BKFC, a bare-knuckle boxing promotion based in Philadelphia that has seen an influx of ex-UFC fighters over the past few years.
In the meantime, fans can definitely catch Riddle when he takes on Fatu at MLW Kings of Colosseum 2024 on Jan. 6. Tickets are on sale now, and the show will be broadcast by FITE as part of TrillerTV+.
No big deal, just Murder Grandpa having a match right there in the aisle.
Sometimes you’re just on a bullet train in Japan and it’s a normal, unremarkable day. And other times, one of the most feared pro wrestlers in the world over the last few decades, Minoru Suzuki, is on the train too.
Having a match. Right there in the aisle.
Yes, Murder Grandpa wasn’t just a passenger, but an active participant in a match against Sanshiro Takagi for DDT Pro-Wrestling. Thanks to footage shared by the Central Japan Railway Company via ABC News, you can watch them duke it out right amidst the travelers.
TRAIN PAIN: A pair of Japanese pro-wrestlers swapped the ring for the rails as they staged a bout on one of the country's super-fast bullet trains. https://t.co/bA4iYuRBEhpic.twitter.com/mMB49QToxc
Dig that Gotch-style piledriver and the reaction from the passengers!
As TDE Wrestling reminds us, this is hardly the first time Takagi and Suzuki have battled somewhere other than between the ropes. But was it the first time Suzuki-san had a match on a train, even given all the things he’s done in his illustrious career? We’re guessing the answer is yes.
If you want to see more of this particular flavor of pro wrestling that DDT does so well, you can watch their shows on the Wrestle Universe streaming service. Or just, you know, hope that Suzuki and Takagi randomly end up battling right where you are someday.
Which isn’t impossible, now that we think about it.
It takes a lot of hustle to find success in the indies, but that’s always been a strength for Matt Cardona.
If you are a wrestling promoter looking to book Matt Cardona, you better be angling for a date in 2024, because he is booked solid for the rest of the year.
If it is for 2023, Cardona will open your email, laugh out loud in real life and ask “Dude, where have you been all year?” He will then reply back to you with “LOL” and move on about his day. The man is booked and busy.
As of this writing, Cardona has had matches for 22 different promotions in 2023, according to Cagematch.net. He currently holds titles for at least six promotions. He may even pop up with his wife’s (Chelsea Green) WWE Women’s Tag Team title.
— Dark Puroresu Flowsion (@PuroresuFlow) July 23, 2023
The latest stop on Cardona’s world tour will be at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia Sept. 3 for Major League Wrestling’s Fury Road, where he will face Mance Warner in a “Kiss My Foot” match.
While Cardona sees MLW as a promotion on the rise, he is not shy about going virtually anywhere that will pay him what he is looking for, and there are a lot of promotions willing to oblige.
At 38 years old and nearly 20 years since his professional wrestling debut, the demand for Cardona’s services are higher than they have ever been. After spending many years on WWE’s roster as more or less a role player, Cardona is looking to seize this moment and capitalize on it.
In Cardona’s mind, it is his time to step to the forefront and shine, and he’s not apologizing about it anytime soon. He is not looking to pass any proverbial torches. He plans on hanging on to said torch for a while.
“This is about me,” Cardona said during a phone interview. “This isn’t about giving back. This isn’t about helping the younger generation. You can call it what you want. I have something to prove. I’m not out to prove the doubters wrong or the haters wrong. I’m trying to prove myself right.”
“I will go do whatever promotion that wants to book me and I will leach off it just like they will leach off me,” he added. “They want the Matt Cardona rub, well, I use them for everything that will benefit me and my career, too, so it’s mutually beneficial.”
Cardona obviously oozes confidence in his ability. He routinely generates buzz through social media with either his matches or with video promos leading up to them.
However, he wasn’t beaming with confidence when he first embarked on his independent journey back in April of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down the entire world, meaning that there was no independent circuit for Cardona to immediately dip his toe into after being released from WWE.
Cardona made some scattered appearances for All Elite Wrestling and Impact Wrestling and continued producing his Major Wrestling Figure podcast with longtime tag team partner and friend, Brian Myers, but didn’t do much else — mainly because he couldn’t.
“Once the world opened back up, I knew I just had to hit the ground running,” Cardona recalled. “I didn’t have a master plan. I didn’t know what I needed to do. I did know I needed to change. I knew I needed to be different. I didn’t know how exactly I was going to do that.”
The change Cardona was looking for came in the form of a deathmatch against Nick Gage for the Game Changer Wrestling World title at GCW Homecoming Weekend on July 24, 2021.
Having spent most of his wrestling career in the PG-rated WWE, Cardona was not exactly what you would call a deathmatch veteran. Gage, on the other hand, became a beloved figure by taking part in countless. On paper, this was a bit of a mismatch. However, Cardona defeated Gage to become the new GCW World champion, sending shockwaves around the wrestling world in the process.
Not only did business pick up for Cardona, so did the heat.
For starters, he defeated everyone’s favorite deathmatch wrestler in his own match. But he did so by turning his nose to the entire independent circuit, cementing himself as the scene’s top villain.
On screen, Cardona’s character represents everything the independents are not. He’s very well off financially (and flaunts that fact), whereas most other independent wrestlers keep day jobs to make ends meet. He also looks down upon his colleagues because he’s been to the big time and the vast majority of them have not.
Cardona has leaned all the way into his newfound heat and says people young and old have expressed their dissatisfaction with his actions when they see him in public.
“Everybody hates Matt Cardona, and that’s fine with me,” he said. “As long as I can get booked, as long as I keep winning, as long as I keep collecting buzz, money and gold, I’m happy.”
But as much as Cardona’s character is the antithesis of what the independents represent, in reality, Cardona has embodied the circuit’s do-it-yourself lifestyle.
Even in the uber-structured environment of WWE, Cardona took it upon himself to launch his own YouTube channel and begin telling his True Long Island Story. The channel’s first video was posted on February 17, 2011, and is still up and running today with 134,000 subscribers.
The series “Z! True Long Island Story” became so popular among wrestling fans that it eventually made its way to WWE’s YouTube channel, which made Cardona — then known as Zack Ryder — into one of the more popular wrestlers on the roster before he even began appearing on television on a regular basis.
The buzz he created did eventually lead to more screen time, and eventually the United States and Intercontinental championships. However, those incredible highs were surrounded by a sea of uneventful times, where Cardona was either a bit player or not a player at all.
Through it all, Cardona kept working.
“I’m so grateful for my time in WWE and the equity that I have from years — a decade-plus of WWE television — set me up for this run on the indies, but I’ve been working my ass off,” Cardona said.
“There were guys, girls, who were released the same day as me or a year after me, two years after me, who haven’t done jack shit. I have no sympathy for that because the work is out there, but you have to hustle. You have to do the work.”
“It doesn’t just stop on weekends,” he added. “Monday through Thursday I’m still busting my ass, whether it be my podcast or social media or doing interviews like this to promote myself. Because I’m not on Raw or Smackdown, Dynamite, Collision, so I have to get my name out there to the masses. If I’m not on social media, if I’m not doing these interviews promoting myself, no one is going to do it for me.”
Cardona isn’t looking for anyone to do anything for him anytime soon. Cardona will appear in MLW this weekend, but isn’t looking to settle down with just one promotion.
According to Cardona, his run on the independents has been the most successful of his career, which means he isn’t looking to end it just because. If WWE or AEW came calling, he’d listen, but he’d have to like the “the cash and the creative” before he signed the dotted line.
“I’m having the most fun I’ve ever had, I’m having the most success I’ve ever had, and I’m making the most money I’ve ever made, so I’m not just going to go to AEW or WWE unless it made sense for me,” Cardona said. “I don’t want to be just another guy on the roster. I want to be the guy on the roster, and that’s what I’m going to do in MLW.”
If anyone does come calling, just remember, he’s booked through 2023.
Get the when, where and how much for all the WrestleMania week wrestling shows in Los Angeles.
Prior to the pandemic, WrestleMania week had a history of becoming the epicenter of the entire pro wrestling universe. Promotions from all over the country, and indeed, the world, would converge on the host city, offering fans a smorgasbord of options leading up to WWE’s biggest show.
Things have been trending back in that direction, and it’s safe to say that for WrestleMania 39 in Los Angeles, that same feel has fully returned. Starting several days before the Showcase of the Immortals, there is pro wrestling of all kinds running straight through the weekend — and even into Monday night, counting the always intriguing Raw After WrestleMania.
If you’re heading to L.A. or just want to keep tabs on everything going down during WrestleMania week, we’re here to help. We’ve gathered up all the wrestling shows by day, along with links to tickets where there’s still some left.
Scroll on down and find the stuff that interests you most, and we hope to run into you sometime during WrestleMania week.