Matt Cardona Was Worried WWE Would Not Release Him

Impact star Matt Cardona joined Oral Sessions with Renee Paquette, guest hosted by his fiancée Chelsea Green. The two talked about life during the pandemic, something that Cardona was, surprisingly, fine with.

"This is going to sound horrible to say, but I loved the pandemic," Cardona said. "On paper it was a horrible year for me. I got fired from WWE, lost my dream job, this global pandemic, we had to cancel our wedding. But I loved it because I was home every single day. I never got a vacation, I never got time off, and I had months just off. And there was nothing to do. I couldn't really go anywhere because we were in the middle of this pandemic, so I just sat pool side every day. We built a little gym in the backyard. I absolutely loved it. And we took the Major Wrestling Podcast and were able to build on that."

Cardona was of course released from WWE during their first wave of pandemic cuts in April of 2020, with Green being released almost a year later. Ultimately Cardona was happy to be released, as it prevented him from having to make the difficult decision to renew his contract with WWE or not when it expired later in 2020.

"I knew the releases were coming that day and my biggest fear was that they weren't going to release me, because my contract was up in August," Cardona said. "I had not re-signed, I didn't know if I wanted to stay and go. So I was like 'oh my god, I hope they don't not release me and I just rot until August.' So once I saw people going I was like 'oh please. Please fire me!' I already had my Pro Wrestling Tees store set up. Listen, losing your dream job sucks. The paycheck coming in every week and then not coming in sucks. But it was time to go. And ultimately the decision was made for me, because I was living with anxiety for over a year negotiating this new deal. And then when the decision was made for me it was like 'okay. It's made.'"

Later Green asked Cardona what he considered his biggest failure during his career. He proceeded to tell a story about trying to set up a match with Dolph Ziggler at WrestleMania, which ended with him watching the show from another WWE wrestler's press box.

"When I was started that YouTube show a decade ago, everything I was doing was working," Cardona said. "Everything, all my ideas were working. So I had this giant, ridiculous idea that I would challenge, or Ziggler would challenge me or I would challenge him, on my YouTube show and set up a match for the next year's WrestleMania, which was going to be in New York/New Jersey. And we had these stickers made up, like these ying yang stickers. I thought 'oh my god, this is going to be great.' What ended up happening, Ziggler ended up wrestling at that WrestleMania. But I wasn't booked and I watched it from Miz' family's press box. So that idea didn't work out, and I spent about $20,000 on stickers. I still have some of them!"

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