Former Champion Vows To Make A ‘F***ing Difference’ If They Return To WWE

WWE

Former Intercontinental Champion Matt Cardona has vowed to make a “f***ing difference” if he returned to the WWE.

Matt Cardona, previously known as Zack Ryder, spent well over a decade with the WWE from 2006 to 2020. However, the company released him in a wave of cuts at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

Since then, Cardona has reinvented himself into “The Deathmatch King” and “Indy God” with a highly successful run on the independent scene and for various promotions, including GCW, TNA Wrestling and more.

The former Zack Ryder has won the GCW World Championship, NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship and wrestled for AEW. In 2024, Cardona has returned to TNA Wrestling following a torn pec injury.

In a new video on his YouTube channel, Matt Cardona reflected on his 2024 so far and discussed a potential return to WWE. He said:

“It’s been a wild year, celebrating 20 years in the business, 20 years since my first match, four years since I was fired from WWE.”

“Now, I’m just coming back from injury. The doctors said six to eight months, I did it in four.”

“Time is not on my side. I’m not getting any younger, but I feel like right now, I haven’t even hit the prime of my career. I feel like my best years are ahead of me.”

“I’ve done it all on the indies. Winning titles, cover of magazines, all over the world, and it’s been fun, and I needed it, I needed to find myself, both as a performer and as a man. I did, I did it all.”

“The time is now to go back. Where do I go? Do I go back to WWE? Do I go to AEW? Just having that taste even, earlier this year, wrestling Adam Copeland [on AEW Collision], just being out there, jam-packed, real arena, not the Ukrainian Cultural Center in LA or The Showboat Hotel in Atlantic City, a real arena, and the crowd responded, just on my entrance. It made me feel like, ‘Okay, everything I’ve been doing, it’s working,'”

On his goals for the rest of the year and always wanting to win the WWE World Championship, Cardona said:

“I didn’t dream as a little kid to just be a pro wrestler. I dreamed of being a top guy, the top guy. You have to have that goal to be successful in this business.”

“I’m very fortunate in my career, 20 years, highs and lows. But I never got the big one. I never won the WWE World Title. That has to be the goal.”

“Because if that’s not the goal, what are we doing? What am I doing here? What am I working towards? I might never achieve that goal, but I’m gonna die trying.”

“I love the indies, I love everything about it. There are days, and we had a great show, made a lot of money on merch, and I’m thinking, ‘This is f***ing awesome, I can do this forever. Then there are days where I’m like, ‘What the f*** am I doing with my life?’”

“When I’m at f***ing GCW in LA and the locker room is a f***ing alley, or if I’m in the middle of nowhere, I do the show, I don’t get a f***ing tweet about it.”

“Did this day exist in my life? It’s not just like, ‘I want to be back there.’ Everyone wants to be back there. But I know if I was back, I’d make a f***ing difference,”

Matt Cardona recently stated that the time is now for him to be on a major TV wrestling company, which you can read at this link here.

Also, his real life friend and Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes commented on his “comeback” video, which you can read here.

Transcription via Fightful

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• matt cardona
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