Pro wrestling veteran Matt Cardona appeared on the Masked Man Show to talk about a number of topics, including how his Death Match with Nick Gage changed his career.
Cardona said, “I’m approached to do this death match with Nick Gage for Homecoming 2021, so four years ago. By the way, after this Sunday, I will be in the main event of Homecoming four years in a row so I’ll pat myself on the back for that. My knee jerk reaction to this match was, no way. I’m not wrestling this criminal, death match who was just on Dark Side of the Ring almost killing David Arquette. But I took a step back and I thought, you know what? People are going to want to watch this. People are going to talk about this and I knew it would be great for my career. I did not realize how great it would be. It literally changed my career. It changed my life by doing that one match. It changed everything for me.”
“To this day, that match was, what, 2021? I just got another action figure from it. This is the third action figure I’ve gotten from that match, so I’ve made so much money off that match. It’s ridiculous. Even after that match, I knew how special this was. That night, that show, which really is an independent show in Atlantic City, New Jersey, it trended over the UFC and Olympics that night, which was unreal. I’m like, I know I have something special here. So I sold all my gear. I sold the boots. I pieced out the boots, the bloody elbow pads, the knee pads, the pants, and then I had this bloody T-shirt. I wore white. I knew I would get a couple trickles of blood on this. This will look cool, but my shirt turned maroon in blood because I went all in with this deathmatch. This wasn’t like a street fight. This wasn’t like a hardcore match. I said, if I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do it. You gotta be all in. As Michael Hayes says, ‘You can’t be half pregnant.’ You gotta go all in and that’s what I did. There’s no one in the world who could take that away from me.”
“I’m very, very proud of that night, but like I said, I could do something better. I started thinking like the collector I am, and I thought about all those WrestleMania plaques that I collected as a fan, or, luckily, you know, I had a couple as the IC champ or tag team champ where they take a piece of the canvas, you know, they cut up the canvas. They put it in a nice plaque with a photo, and you sign it, and they sell it. I contacted that company, and we made official plaques with a piece of that bloody shirt, a nice autograph. I made over 20 grand on a T-shirt. Now listen, that doesn’t happen every show but that’s 20 grand on just the T-shirt, plus what I got paid, plus all this merch that’s still coming out to this day, and not only the merch directly from that show, but it’s changed my whole career. You just said I’m the death match King. I’ve had all these hardcore matches. Bro, I’ve had three death matches. I fooled the world. I’ve had three.”
On Chelsea Green returning to WWE:
“We both knew she had to go back. It wasn’t even a conversation because she was there before, but not really. She was in NXT, but wasn’t even really used on NXT. Then she got called up to the main roster, did a couple shows here and there, you know, she really didn’t do anything. She wasn’t a WWE Superstar, so she had to go back. She had to know. She’s been absolutely killing it. Even when she re-debuted at the Royal Rumble, came in, got thrown right out, so many people were so upset and so angry that I knew, like, Oh, this is it because people are gonna be talking about her. It’s about the character. It’s about the connections. It’s about the moments.”
You can check out the complete podcast below.
