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Matt Cardona Recalls Training Under Mikey Whipwreck, What He Learned

April 30, 2023 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Zack Ryder Matt Cardona WWE Image Credit: WWE

Matt Cardona credits ECW legend Mikey Whipwreck for teaching him some “invaluable” aspects of wrestling. Cardona was a guest on Stories with Brisco & Bradshaw and talked about how Whipwreck taught him a lot about putting matches together.

“So, it was such a weird dynamic,” Cordona said (per Fightful). “In September 2003, I went to the school and there’s no real trainers, like this guy is teaching you to lock up. This guy is teaching you how to do moonsaults, what’s going on here. Even then I was like this isn’t right, there should be one guy teaching the basics. I’m learning a hammer lock, and the next day I’m learning how to do a 450, this doesn’t seem right [laughs]. That school eventually closes down, but I was still on the shows. I was in somebody’s posse, one of those bodyguard type guys. I wasn’t having matches yet, but I was on the shows.”

He continued, “Then Mikey [Whipwreck] came back in and they reopened the school and he was teaching guys from scratch, but I was already advanced technically because I was on the show. I didn’t learn from scratch from Mikey, but he would teach me like the structure of the match, which was so important because like I said earlier, anyone can do the moves but you need to know why you’re doing this move, why you’re putting it here or the ways to dictate a locker room. That stuff was the invaluable stuff he taught me.”