Matt Cardona made an appearance on Matt Hardy’s podcast to discuss a wide range of topics.
During it, Cardona talked about his transformation from Zack Ryder to Matt Cardona following his WWE release.
“So even before I got let go from WWE, I knew the woo woo woo goofy sh*t had to change. I stopped wearing the headband, the glasses, got in great shape, and grew the beard. It’s like, you could pitch stuff all day, but you don’t write the show. I don’t have the pencil. I can try my best to express who I want to be, but unless you’re portrayed that way on television, it’s just not going to work. Not that I had handcuffs on, but when I was released by WWE, the handcuffs were off and I could just be me and try anything and throw it against the wall. I wish I could say this is all calculated, but it wasn’t. I was just fu**ing trying anything and taking any booking I could.”
“When that GCW deathmatch got presented to me, I said, ‘No fu**ing way. I’m not wrestling this fu**ing guy, this fu**ing criminal, this guy who’s on Dark Side of the Ring. There’s no fu**ing way I’m doing this backyard sh*t. Then I took a step back and I said, ‘Well, it will definitely create some buzz. People are gonna want to see Zack Ryder get carved up by Nick Gage.’ I didn’t anticipate how much buzz it would create and it changed everything for me. It changed my career, my life. That’s what I needed. That was the step that I needed to change from what people thought of Zack Ryder to the new Matt Cardona.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription