Matt Cardona Talks WWE Releasing Bray Wyatt, AEW Signing Former WWE Stars
Only a few weeks after appearing on Oral Sessions with his fiancée Chelsea Green, GCW World Champion Matt Cardona returned to the podcast, hosted by Renee Paquette. Paquette brought up being bewildered by the recent WWE release of Bray Wyatt, a decision that is equally perplexing to Cardona. Nevertheless, he believes Wyatt ill come out of it okay.
"I don't know what's going on," Cardona said. "They say budget cuts but aren't they doing very, very well? Maybe that's why by letting everybody go, I don't know. I'm not in those meetings, I have no idea what's going on. I think it's obvious that someone like Bray Wyatt is going to be just fine, if he chooses to be. But I don't think you necessarily need to be a top guy like Bray to be just fine. You can be anybody and be just fine.
"But guess what, newsflash, you've got to work. You've got to hustle, you've got to bust your ass, because it's not just going to happen for you. Crumbs make crumb cake. F***ing do everything you can. Pro Wrestling Tees, indies, start a podcast. Whatever your passion is do something, it doesn't have to be a podcast. Do whatever you want. But if you're just going to sit on your ass and think you're going to make this WWE money? Newsflash, spoiler, it ain't going to happen."
Paquette and Cardona also discussed the talk of every WWE release possibly winding up in AEW, something Cardona doesn't believe is feasible. He described his own positive experience with AEW last year, as well as the potential for talent to have more options.
"How many people can they (AEW) take?" Cardona asked. "I was there for three or four shows and it was great. It was a great time, I loved it, it was fun. Buzzworthy stuff, it was cool meeting all these new people and teaming with Cody. But at the end of the day they didn't offer me a deal and I didn't ask. So that was it. I was like 'okay, time to move on.' That was it. I'm not going to sit around and wait. I'm not going to sit around and cry. Time to go do other things, you know?"
Cardona also talked about the difference between his current stretch now between Impact, GCW and the indies and his decade plus long run in WWE. For Cardona, it feels now that his hard work is both allowed and appreciated.
"I love working hard," Cardona said. "And I felt like in WWE, for me personally, I wasn't able to work hard because I wasn't given the opportunity to work hard. Now I feel like I can work my ass off. And listen, not everything is going to be a success. But at least I have the opportunity to try. That's all I ever wanted, was an opportunity. Now I have this safe in my house, full of graded traded cards that worth money and cash that I make on the indies. It's great!"
Another thing Cardona likes is the ability to have some creative input, in contrast to the lack of such in WWE. He talked about helping Impact out in terms of merchandising and revealed a recent creative idea he came up with for Slammiversary.
"It's cool to just have say," Cardona said. "And for someone like me I didn't necessarily have that say. And that's fine. I'm not complaining about that. It is what it is, not everyone can be the top guy, not everyone can win every match up. I get it. But now, I feel like in Impact I have a lot of input. I help them out with merch stuff. I'm like 'hey, we should be doing this.' I don't even work there and I'm on these business calls about their merch.
"But it's fun for me, it's fun. I had this idea for like how we should debut Chelsea and the entrance we should do. They wouldn't have listened to me if I asked to do that in WWE. Would they have listened to someone else? Sure but not me. But now at these places they are listening to what I'm saying. And not that I know everything, but I do know a little bit."
For years now Cardona has adopted the moniker "Always Ready." He explained to Paquette why he came up with that, after spending many years in WWE unhappy and being passive aggressive over his push.
"It's become a lifestyle," Cardona said of the moniker. "But listen, I'll also say that I think I also invented the passive aggressive, negative, bitter tweet. I think if you go back to 2012 when my whole YouTube run was being killed off, I think I was doing them then before anyone else, before it was cool to b***h on the internet. So I was definitely in a bitter spot, negative spot. I would always, and I'm not proud of that, but that's the truth. I was. And then one day I realized 'hey, guess what? B****ing on the internet or being miserable, it's not changing my situation in the company and it's not making me any happier.' So I just changed mind set.
"In this wrestling business there's only a couple things you can control, like really control. And that's your physique. No one's going to say 'you can't work out.' No one's going to say that. No one's going to say 'you can't have nice gear. That gear is too nice.' And also no one can say you can't be happy. So you can control your attitude, your gear and your physique. And I just tried to kill those three things. For instance, if Vince McMahon is watching Main Event and says 'why aren't we doing anything with him?' Two weeks later I win the Intercontinental Title at WrestleMania. Listen, it's not always going to happen like that, but you never know. So you always got to be ready for any situation. If you're not getting opportunities every single week, when you actually get one, you better be ready cause if you go and blow it, that's on you."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Oral Sessions with Renee Paquette and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription