In a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet, Matt Cardona (fka Zack Ryder in WWE) discussed several topics, including why he thought his WWE Intercontinental Championship win at WrestleMania 32 may have led to a main event type push in the company.
“I did think after the Intercontinental Title thing that now we’re cooking, I think people were taking me a little more seriously. At any job, when you start, people look at how you started then, so people were starting to look at me as this 20-year-old kid and at the time, I was a 30-year-old man.
They were starting to finally realize, okay, this guy can still go, he’s still popular, after all these years we haven’t done anything with him, he’s still popular. If they put me in a situation where the fans can believe in me, they do, I even went to Kevin Dunn to get my music changed and updated, make it a rock version. I really thought that this was going to be it, but it wasn’t.”
The interview is available in full at this link.