John Cena Expresses How Happy He Was To See Matt Cardona (Zack Ryder) Return To WWE

Cardona was back on the main roster for the first time in five years.

WWE is on the road to determining who will be John Cena’s final match on December 13th at Saturday Night’s Main Event.

That is being determined via ‘The Last Time is Now’ tournament. One of the surprise entrants in the tournament was revealed on the 11/14 Friday Night SmackDown, and it was Matt Cardona (Zack Ryder) making his return to face L.A. Knight.

On the Raw Recap podcast, Cena spoke about how proud he was to see Cardona back in WWE. While discussing that, he heaped praise onto the current WWE Women’s United States and AAA World Mixed Tag Team Champion Chelsea Green, who is Cardona’s wife.

“Man, I was very, very glad to see Zack Ryder come back. Matt (Cardona) is a personal friend of mine. I can speak candidly like that and I’ve seen his mind grow. You wanna talk about I was being curious in a quest for growth. With Zack Ryder, I knew from a long time ago, has accrued so much sports entertainment wisdom, and it’s amazing, when we have interactions, he’ll tell me about his journey and be like, ‘This is what you were trying to talk about before and I wasn’t ready to understand it,’ and I like rooting for people who are humble enough to admit when they’re wrong and always wanna grow and are doing things for the greater good of the business. Matt’s certainly one of those guys… His wife Chelsea (Green) is certainly one of those folks, who takes an opportunity and makes the absolute best out of it and I was really happy to see Zack Ryder back.”

Cardona fell in defeat to Knight in the tournament match. The second of the surprises was revealed on the 11/17 Raw when Solo Sikoa faced Nic Nemeth (Dolph Ziggler). Sikoa emerged victorious from the bout to advance.

If the quote in this article is used, please credit Raw Recap with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.