Matt Cardona Not With AEW Long Term

Blink and you might miss him. In a year of a ton of stories, one of the biggest has to be the amount of wrestlers who were released from WWE back in April. With more than two dozen wrestlers let go from the company in the span of a few days, there were suddenly all kinds of free agents available for someone to pick up. One name was signed to a major company, but it might not be for very long.

This week on AEW Dynamite, Matt Cardona, formerly known as Zack Ryder, made his surprise debut by saving Cody from a post match beatdown at the hands of the Dark Order. Cardona was one of the bigger names to be released from WWE and his signing was a big deal for AEW. However, the signing might be short lived as things might not be exactly long term.

According to Wrestlinginc.com, Cardona’s deal with AEW is only for five appearances, one of which took place earlier this week. There is no word on why the deal is short term or if either side would be interested in having the deal extended for more appearances. Cardona’s second appearance is already confirmed, as he will be teaming up with Cody to face the Dark Order on the August 5 Dynamite.

It was quite the first of five. Check out how Cardona made his AEW debut:

Opinion: This makes sense from both sides. Cardona is definitely someone with experience, but at the same time, he might be better suited as someone in the short term. He was mainly a less serious wrestler most of the time in WWE and having him suddenly be a long term higher level star might feel a little bit weird. He is certainly worth a test drive though and good for him for getting a shot somewhere else.

What are you expecting from Cardona? Will he be around long term? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his- Amazon author page with 30 wrestling books. Get the latest and greatest in professional wrestling news by signing up for our daily email newsletter. Just look below for “GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES” to sign up. Thank you for reading!