During an appearance on the Talk is Jericho podcast, Matt Cardona talked about his brief AEW run last year and why he isn’t part of the company right now:
“I loved it. It was super cool. Do I wish it was with people there? Sure, it is what it is. Everyone was super welcoming. It’s something I definitely needed. Sometimes perception is reality. When people are like, ‘Oh my God. He got so good. He got in great shape.’ If you want to believe that, sure, but I was in the same shape I was in for years. AEW, it just didn’t work out at the time. There’s so many people there, and there just wasn’t anything for me at the time. No hard feelings, not to say I’ll never be there again, because I would love to be.Obviously, there’s no doubt AEW is the place to be. It’s the talk of the wrestling business every single week. Timing is everything, and it wasn’t the right time.”
Cardona also commented on his favorite post-WWE match so far:
“I think it’s going to be the obvious one, this deathmatch with Nick Gage. The buzz aside, let’s say nobody ever saw it. It was still an adrenaline rush for me. Creatively, it was fun to interact with the people in a way that there’s no way I would be able to do in WWE or probably anywhere on TV where I’m flipping them off. It was so fun to be an a**hole. To feel heat, and I’m sure some of it was, ‘Let’s boo this bad guy’, but some of it was ‘I hate this motherf**ker.’ I loved it. I wasn’t scared of it. I would love to take this opportunity and be a bad guy because I don’t need everybody to like me. I don’t care. If you don’t like me, don’t like me. I think this time it’s such an interesting dynamic because I can be me, and be a babyface in Impact or on the indies, and then be me, the same me, and be this hated heel in GCW. It’s an interesting dynamic. I think it’s fun. Of course, there’s going to be twists and turns. I’ll evolve it and change it a little bit. I’m very creative, and I’m going to see what happens. It’s fun for me. It’s so fun.”
