Matt Cardona on Chris Jericho’s influential advice

Matt Cardona reflected on Chris Jericho’s influential advice throughout his career, emphasizing how Jericho’s guidance shaped his evolution as a wrestler. “Chris, whether he knows it or not, he helped me out so many times in my career,” Cardona said. He shared an early example, explaining, “I was doing the one-legged tights for the ‘Woo Woo Woo’ Zack Ryder, because at the time, I wanted to be different from Curt Hawkins, different from Edge. I wanted to stand out, and it worked. It really did. But one day, Chris pulled me aside, and I’m paraphrasing, but he basically said, like, ‘You’re too good to be doing this. It worked. But you gotta wear trunks to be taken more seriously.’ The next week, trunks. All because of what Chris said.”

Cardona then discussed Jericho’s advice after his WWE release and AEW debut. “Fast forward, a couple years later, I get fired from WWE,” he recalled. “I had my AEW debut. I knew, ‘Okay, Zack Ryder is dead. He’s dead. It’s gonna be Matt Cardona,’ right? But I thought, ‘Okay, I can still throw up the LI, right?’ I did that. I helped Cody Rhodes. I throw up the LI. Chris pulls me aside, he’s not mad at me, but he says, ‘You gotta get rid of that shit. Everything about Zack Ryder has to die.'”

Cardona admitted he initially resisted, replying, “‘Well, Chris, I just put out a t-shirt that says ‘Strong Island, doing the LI.’ He’s like, ‘I don’t care.’ He was right. Like, it all had to die.” He praised Jericho as “the master of evolution, everything he does, the reinvention, time and time again,” and acknowledged Jericho’s influence on his own transformation, concluding, “He’s an inspiration. Now, I feel like I am, too.”

Source: Matt Cardona YouTube