Tag: Matt Cardona

AEW Collision results 03/30/24: Adam Copeland is Alwayz Ready for 1st title defense

Several Dynasty matches also came into focus during AEW Collision in Ontario.

What do you do when your bigger competition is about to have its biggest event of the year? Just keep keeping on and put on the best shows you can, which is what AEW Collision will hopefully be tonight in Ontario.

AEW has found some hot crowds during its current Canadian swing, and this should be no exception since Adam Copeland is making the first defense of his TNT Championship. We won’t know who the challenger is until their music hits, which is always fun.

Other big business (no pun intended) for Collision includes a pair of tag team title tournament matches that will help advance two duos toward a title match at Dynasty. We’ve got FTR and Big Bill/Ricky Starks to move on, but we shall see.

Here’s how it all went down.

AEW Collision results from London, Ontario:

  • Adam Copeland kicks off the show by saying how grateful he is to be in Ontario and how the stakes are raised for the Cope Open since he’ll be defending his TNT Championship in these matches now; Copeland makes the call for someone to come out and accept the challenge, and it’s answered by Matt Cardona

  • Adam Copeland def. Matt Cardona by pinfall to retain the AEW TNT Championship
  • After the match, the lights go out and come back on to reveal Malakai Black standing in the ring, bringing on a “holy s–t” chant from the crowd; Buddy Matthews attacks Copeland from behind, and Mark Briscoe fares poorly while trying to help him, but the appearance of Eddie Kingston to reinforce the faces gets the House of Black to pull a disappearing act
  • Lexy Nair asks FTR about their strategy against The Infantry, to which Cash Wheeler says it’s to not look past their opponents since they’ve been on a losing streak, and Dax Harwood says they need to make sure The Infantry’s Cinderella story ends tonight

  • Daddy Ass cuts a promo on Jay White ahead of their meeting on the next episode of Dynamite, and The Acclaimed have some choice words for all of Bullet Club Gold as well

  • FTR def. The Infantry by pinfall in an AEW World Tag Team Championship Tournament Quarterfinal
  • Nair talks to Big Bill and Ricky Starks, who are confident about defeating Top Flight despite not having a match in quite some time

  • Copeland says he knows the TNT title makes him a marked man, but he isn’t crazy about the House of Black jumping in his business, and challenges the House to a six-man match at Dynasty against him, Briscoe and Kingston, both of whom add their own two cents

  • Kyle O’Reilly def. JD Drake by submission, and is immediately hoisted onto the shoulders of the Undisputed Kingdom, who clearly want him to join up
  • Top Flight def. Big Bill and Ricky Starks by pinfall in an AEW World Tag Team Championship Tournament Quarterfinal; also appears that Starks may have suffered an injury toward the end of the match
  • Christopher Daniels makes his own House of Black challenge, the cool thing to do tonight, apparently
  • Thunder Rosa def. Lady Frost by pinfall
  • Renee Paquette speaks to Toni Storm, who asks Mariah May if she’s been plotting to get a title shot all these months and ends up kissing her, saying she sees a lot of Mariah in her

  • Bryan Danielson, Claudio Castagnoli and Katsuyori Shibata def. Lance Archer and The Righteous by pinfall as Shibata pins Vincent

Matt Cardona is basking in his moment, and will make no apologies 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.

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.

In honor of May the 4th, look back at 4 times Star Wars, WWE crossed over

Nothing will top Sasha Banks in “The Mandalorian,” but a few other Star Wars moments with WWE superstars were also fun.

If you’re cynical about commercialized “holidays,” there’s a good chance you don’t celebrate May the 4th, a.k.a. Star Wars Day. Yes, it’s a little cringe-inducing that it got picked just because it’s verbally so close to saying “May the Force,” as in “May the Force be with you.”

But guess what? Tons of people love Star Wars, and we’re no different here at Wrestling Junkie. That means it’s only appropriate to use this May the 4th to look back at a few times the worlds of WWE and Star Wars collided.

Kind of like the IP itself, some were kind of awful and others were amazing. Also your opinions on which are which may vary. But they were definitely all memorable. Let’s take a spin through times not that long ago in a galaxy that’s actually our own.

Matt Cardona loves that NWA has no script

NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion Matt Cardona joined the Under the Ring Podcast to talk about what he loves about NWA and how he keeps grinding at a furious pace.

When NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion Matt Cardona made his first NWA appearance, it wasn’t exactly a match made in heaven between wrestler and promotion.

In fact, as Cardona explained as the guest on this week’s episode of Under the Ring with Phil Strum (recorded prior to his recent injury), he did the opposite of endearing himself to the locker room when he first arrived.

“I was saying things like, ‘I thought NWA sucked as a kid,’ I thought it was old and dated and boring then, and I was saying I still think it sucks now,” Cardona said. “It’s still old and dated and boring, and I could tell a lot of people were not happy about that.”

Things have improved since then, with Cardona noting that as he’s now the top champ in the promotion, “I’m doing something right.”

One of the things Cardona says suits him best about NWA is that no one is telling him what to say.

“What I love about NWA, there is no script,” he said. “There are no writers, there wasn’t even an outline. It was, ‘OK, Matt, you’re going to talk in this segment … go!'”

Listen to the entire episode above to hear Cardona talk about:

  • What’s helped his career longevity, and why he thinks he’s better than ever today
  • Why the constant travel is actually “the easy part” of his fast-paced life
  • How he changed his future when he was unhappy with his place in WWE by figuring out how to use the internet to his advantage

Under the Ring drops new episodes every Monday, as Strum uses the connections he’s made from decades covering pro wrestling to speak with a different but always fascinating personality from the industry. Recent guests have included WWE Superstar Sonya Deville, as well as AEW star Serena Deeb and AEW Women’s World Champion Thunder Rosa.

Subscribe to Under the Ring via Apple Music or your favorite podcast provider, or check out Strum’s interviews in video form on the Under the Ring YouTube channel.