YMMV / Matt Cardona

• Audience-Alienating Era: The 2012 period where he was completely buried after his title win, made to look bad in a storyline with Eve Torres and was either rarely seen or jobbing. The Baltimore Sun even described the comparison between 2011 and 2012 as...
  "The 2011 calendar year was a dream for Ryder... But 2012 was a nightmare..."
• Badass Decay:
  • In late 2011, he started to get a single's push, even having an arc of him trying to win the United States Championship. 2012? He's lost the title and becoming The Chew Toy and Butt-Monkey in the Cena/Kane feud. The only way in which he looked good was that he demostrated to be able to absorb a whole lot of damage. To put it in perspective, that time he was The Chew Toy? Kane had to attack him for a single month before Ryder was put on a stretcher. That's right a whole month.
  • Averted on WrestleMania 32, where he came away as the Intercontinental Champion, having to face 6 other superstars, including the likes of Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, and Dolph Ziggler. Against all odds, he was the one who came away with the title, standing victorious atop that ladder. Subverted as he lost the championship the very next day.
• Base-Breaking Character: It seems that either you love Zack Ryder and want to see him on television in a prominent spot, or you wonder what the heck the big deal is with him, and whether everyone who likes him has lost their minds. There is no middle ground.
  • As Matt Cardona, he recently became one again after defeating Nick Gage in Gage's signature deathmatch and becoming GCW Champion. Detractors didn't like it that a former mainstream WWE stooge came in and took the title from a folk hero like Gage, while other at least respect Cardona for actually fighting through a deathmatch and bleeding buckets for the win.
• Breakup Breakout: With his former tag partner, Curt Hawkins. Ryder's gone from jobber to United States Champion and top fan favorite in less than a year. The high point of Hawkins' post-Edge career was getting squashed by Brodus Clay in Clay's "Funkasaurus" debut. Even applied after Ryder was demoted to extra again at the beginning of 2012, as by June 2014 Hawkins was released.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: He was more over than John Cena in 2011 despite him only being a midcarder.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: His outfit is awful...ly hilarious.
• Fridge Brilliance: For his various title wins, why does it usually take him multiple wins (especially on a character that's suppose to be rising quickly up the ranks)? It's to show off/reinforce his newfound Determinator/Took a Level in Badass nature and how Zack's success is not the result of the company but him simply doing his hardest to succeed as the Plucky Underdog!
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Back at WrestleMania X, Razor Ramon wins the Intercontinental Championship, and even took a picture with a young Ryder. Fast-forward 22 years later, at WrestleMania 32, Ryder finally wins the Intercontinental Championship, and even had took another picture with Razor Ramon, with Ryder as champion.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The entire time Zack Ryder was the "Assistant to the General Manager" of SmackDown, he branded himself (much to Teddy Long's annoyance) as the "Assistant General Manager" (i.e. Teddy's number two and presumptive successor). On 7-13-2012, he actually was the General Manager of SmackDown for a day.
• Older Than They Think: Most people think that his current gimmick started when he first appeared on ECW in 2009. However, the first time he portrayed this character was on John Morrison and The Miz's online show The Dirt Sheet months before the 2009 draft, with Curt Hawkins acting as a Straight Man. Justified in that the gimmick wasn't fully developed during those Dirt Sheet segments. He didn't have the new theme or the spiked short hair yet.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Watching the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from Kane on the 1/23/12 Raw is just painful, and seeing him stretchered off after being chokeslammed right through the stage is what makes it qualify as this. Then it got worse. He's somehow alive by the Royal Rumble but Kane just takes the time to tombstone him in front of Eve. Damn it, just when you think Ryder was on top of the world, something horrible has to happen to him. The night he comes back from that, Cena kisses Eve after saving her and Zack sees it. Then after he comes out to confront Cena instead of letting him talk about The Rock, Kane pushes him off the stage. The following week, Eve outright admits she used him.
  • His career following his late 2011 push. For all the momentum he had going, he ended up being used to give John Cena something to do before his eventual match with The Rock and propel Eve as a super heel. Save for a few Throw the Dog a Bone moments, he's been relegated to jobber status.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Went into the match where Jack Swagger defeated him for the WWE United States Championship on the January 16, 2012 Raw with taped ribs, lasting a little over 2 minutes. The opportunity to elevate him from goof to tough guy was right there, and they didn't take it.
  • There were reportedly plans to bring Layla back from injury to team with Zack and face Eve Torres and someone else (possibly Jack Swagger since he'd defeated him for the title) in a mixed tag at WrestleMania 28. This was ultimately abandoned for the sake of putting all the people involved (minus Layla) into the Team Teddy vs Team Johnny tag match, leading to Eve getting one over on Zack again by costing him the match - and never getting any comeuppance for her actions. A mixed tag would have allowed Zack to properly get revenge on Eve, also setting Layla up nicely as a face on her return (as it happened, she won the belt off Nikki Bella on her first match back and did nothing of note for the next six months).
  • Ryder was an incredible underdog going into WrestleMania 32, and he came away with the Intercontinental Championship. The very next day on Raw, the Dallas crowd was totally behind Ryder, chanting "You deserve it!" And yet... 24 hours after his historic moment, he loses the championship to the Miz, then loses his rematch the following SmackDown. After all the emotion, he doesn't even keep the title for a day, effectively making the biggest upset in WrestleMania 32 all for nothing.^note To be fair, he wasn't supposed to win the belt- the other six guys in the match pressured the writers into giving him a WrestleMania moment, with Miz presumably being the one who was supposed to win it in the first place, so Ryder losing the belt to him the next night was just getting the story back on track, while adding more heat to the Miz's character by having him spoil Ryder's victory.
• Tough Act to Follow: Z! True Long Island Story is clearly this, as its follow up, Last ReZort, only lasted two episodes and gained no traction, and though Z! True Comeback Story did better, it wasn't as strong as ZTLIS. For that matter, it was this to the rest of the roster, as various WWE wrestlers attempted to launch their own web series, but most of their attempts failed or were shut down by management, and it wasn't until Up, Up, Down, Down that we got a successful one.
• The Woobie: Oh dear god yes with the whole Kane, Cena and Eve situation.

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