Matt Cardona Comments On Why His AEW Run Was So Short
On the latest episode of Pro Wrestling 4 Life, two-time WWE Hall of Famer Sean "X-Pac" Waltman sat down with Matt Cardona. A few months after his WWE departure, Cardona made his AEW debut saving Cody Rhodes on an episode of Dynamite.
Cardona's last AEW match was an eight-man tag at All Out. Pro Wrestling 4 Life co-host and Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman asked Cardona why his AEW run was so short.
"I had a little agreement with them to do a couple shows, and they never offered me anything long term," Cardona said. "I'm not gonna sit there and beg. It is what it is. I had a great, great time there. It was awesome. It was an awesome experience. Everyone was so welcoming to me. Listen, it was great, and AEW is the place to be. It's thriving right now. It has all these different shows, has different YouTube shows, two TV shows. It's awesome, but at the end of the day, I wasn't offered anything, and I wasn't gonna sit around and wait to be offered something. I mean, that's the truth."
Samoa Joe recently made his return to WWE NXT after being released by WWE. There have been reports that Aleister Black could return to WWE after being released. Hausman asked Cardona if he sees himself going back to WWE as well.
"Well, listen, they certainly never offered me anything and never say never right," Cardona stated. "I'm not gonna say, 'I'm not gonna go to WWE. I hate WWE.' WWE is great. It was the only thing I ever loved as a kid, and I'm not just saying that, it was the only wrestling company I loved. The only thing I loved was wrestling, was WWE, and I spent my whole adult life there.
"I'm so fortunate for everything, but right now, my goal is not 'how can I get back to WWE?' That's not my goal right now. I don't even think about it. Will I ever go back? Never say never. Sure, maybe, whatever. I'm not like thinking, 'well, what can I do to get noticed so they'll bring me back?' No, I don't care. I'm having so much fun outside WWE."
"Just do your own thing, man," Waltman added. "Just do your own s**t. It's so smart. The more people do that, the better."
"I tweeted this out to everybody who got released a couple weeks ago. Even when my fiancé Chelsea [Green] got released, I was getting a haircut and all the releases were happening. I was texting Pro Wrestling Tees, 'Put her store back up now. We need to do this now.' She knows what she's doing, but I think people just need to hustle.
"You need to go out there, and take advantage of this, and be your own boss, and take riskS and bet on yourself. Anybody who got released, they're super talented, and they they can make a name for themselves and they don't have to be done with this business if they don't want to be and they don't let the business beat them down."
A new episode of Sean Waltman's Pro Wrestling 4 Life drops every Thursday morning on all major podcast platforms and in video form at YouTube.com/XPac Thursdays at 3 pm EST!