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.
Matt Cardona wore the WWE Women’s Tag title in Japan today at Ryogoku! pic.twitter.com/2XrVZ9Cw5a
— 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.
THE Agent @TheMattCardona makes his debut against #SGC’s @ManceWarner! 🔥 #MLWFury
📍Philly | Sept 3 | @FITETV 🌐https://t.co/qFqQJOUYBB pic.twitter.com/Qk0MSQojHI— MLW (@MLW) September 1, 2023
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.
