Matt Cardona once again pointed to his Death Match against Nick Gage as the moment that changed his career and ultimately made his WWE return possible.
Speaking with The Wrestling Classic over SummerSlam weekend, Cardona looked back on the GCW Homecoming main event on 7/24/2021 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he defeated Gage to win the GCW World Championship just over a year after WWE released him.
“It has been five years since that death match with Nick Gage. Yeah, I don’t think I’d be here talking to you, I don’t think I’d be back in WWE if it wasn’t for that death match, and everything that came from that death match.”
“That death match with Nick Gage, it changed my career and it changed my life.”
Cardona previously discussed the match during a March appearance on Cody Rhodes’ What Do You Wanna Talk About?, where he talked about fully committing to the deathmatch style — glass, light tubes, pizza cutters — and said the reaction far exceeded his expectations and changed how he was perceived compared with his previous WWE run.
That reinvention paid off. Cardona returned to WWE full-time on 1/2/2026 under his real name, defeating Kit Wilson on SmackDown. Since then, he has faced Trick Williams, Randy Orton, and Sami Zayn. Most recently, he defeated Wilson at a live event in Springfield, Illinois, on 7/30/2026.