For the past few years, Matt Cardona has been making a killing on the independent wrestling scene. Appearing all around the world, including places like GCW, TNA Wrestling, AAA, and DDT, Cardona has found success after his lengthy WWE tenure came to an end in 2020.
But shortly after making his in-ring return recently, getting back into action after a torn pec kept him inactive for months, Cardona wondered whether the next chapter of his career would be in independent wrestling.
“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,” Cardona said for a video on his Youtube channel. “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, right? 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 [in AEW], 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.’”
Cardona mentioned how his feelings about being an independent wrestler can change sometimes: “There are days, and we had a great show, made a lot of money on merch, and I’m thinking, ‘This is f****** awesome, I can do this forever,” he said. “Then there are days where I’m like, ‘What the f*** am I doing with my life?’ When I’m at f****** GCW in LA and the locker room is a f****** alley, or if I’m in the middle of nowhere, I do the show, I don’t get a f****** tweet about it. Did this day exist in my life? It’s not just like, (fake whining voice) ‘I want to be back there.’ Everyone wants to be back there. But I know if I was back, I’d make a f****** difference.”
Later in the video, Cardona compared his schedule as an independent wrestler to the work he did while with WWE. He mentioned that his current workload is travel intense, as his bookings can be all around the world instead of close together in a more organized tour format.
“The WWE schedule, at least when I was there, I think being an independent wrestler is tougher,” he said. “Let’s compare. Let’s say the WWE schedule, and now it’s even lighter, but at the time, let’s say it was four days. If you’re on Raw, you fly out Friday morning [and] do the live event in wherever city. And then you’re driving, you know? Nine times out of ten, you’re driving. Every city you’re driving to, you could sleep in all f****** day if you wanted to. You sleep as much as you want. And that last city you fly home, so it’s only two flights. In indie wrestling, even if it’s three days, early morning flight Friday, do the show. Saturday morning, early morning flight to the next show, do the show. Sunday, early morning flight to that show. And Monday you get home. So on Monday I’m f****** dead. It f**** with your schedule because you’re on the road.”
